


A Window in Time

by Ivalee



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: After Camlann Merlin Big Bang, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Caves, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 11:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20994134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivalee/pseuds/Ivalee
Summary: Geophysicist, Arthur Pendragon, receives a grant from his sister's company for a research venture in a newly discovered cave.  His first day on the project, Arthur follows a mysterious voice into a small cavern.  He finds himself talking with Merlin, who claims to be a sorcerer from the 14th century.  Arthur becomes so enamored with his new friend that he won't leave the cave, which naturally concerns his sister, and not just because she needs his research to increase profits.  When Merlin is captured for using magic, Arthur is desperate to rescue him, but how can he help someone 700 years in the past?





	A Window in Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rou/gifts).

> I thought I’d get a head start on ACBB this year by starting in January, but, well, good intentions... Anyway, even with a very busy summer, Rou created magic again! I cannot thank you enough for six amazing ACBBs together! You are a super star, my dear! I wish you all good things with your new job- I know you'll be fabulous!
> 
> And speaking of super stars- Schweet! Thank you so much for the totally last minute beta! And thanks to the mods for keeping this fest going and running everything so smoothly!

Residents of Lomswick, England were mildly inconvenienced when the ground jolted beneath them in the middle of a sunny Thursday afternoon.

The initial jolt was followed by a series of small tremors.

During the event, a picture frame was knocked over in the home of Anjali Saha. Anjali chuckled, setting the photo right as she passed through the living room on her way out the door to visit the granddaughter pictured in the photo. Across the street, Sandra Bolver had to mop up some tomato soup that had sloshed out of her, perhaps slightly overfilled, bowl after she had placed it on the table just as the first jolt hit.

On the other side of town, at the university, students jokingly tweeted the administration, asking for their afternoon classes to be cancelled after the trauma they had suffered.

Although the town and the university survived the small earthquake with no real damage, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, deep beneath the ground and sixteen miles outside of town, a small fissure had opened in the limestone walls of Windal Cavern. The subsequent tremors caused the porous limestone to crumble, expanding the gap until it was just large enough for a person to squeeze through.

Windal Cavern was too small to be of interest to tourists or even to most cavers; however, the holes and passages of the karst formation had provided nesting and hiding spaces for mammals reaching back as far as the early Pliocene epoch, and evidence of those animals remained in the form of fossils. Therefore, the cave had attracted the interest of Dr. Gwen Smith, a paleontology professor at the local university who specialised in tracing climate changes through the Quaternary period using the fossil record.

On a research excursion one Saturday morning, three weeks after the infamous Lomswick earthquake, Gwen noticed the new passage that had opened in the wall of the cavern. Tempted as she was to explore this new section, she knew better than to venture into unknown passages in a cave alone. She submitted a grant request to her department for funding, intending to hire experienced cavers to help her discover the secrets this newly exposed cavern might contain. And she waited.

Nearly two months later, the head of her department, Annis Caerleon, knocked on her office door.

“Congratulations, Gwen! We finally have the money for the grant you submitted.”

Glancing up at Annis over the rims of her glasses, Gwen raised her eyebrows. “For the dig in France?”

“Uh, no, not—“

“For the full time lab assistant?”

“Well, no, I mean, your grad students can—“

Gwen sighed. “Right. So the department finally scraped together a few hundred pounds for me to hire some cavers for a couple of days.” When her boss echoed her disappointed sigh, Gwen smiled. “It’s fine, really. I know money’s tight right now.”

“Paleontology’s just not a very popular discipline at the moment. Not like back in the nineties after the first Jurassic Park film came out.”

Gwen had heard this lament before, so she simply shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t know much about that. Considering that I was five when that film was released.”

Annis sighed again, but this time her sigh was accompanied by a wry smile. She muttered under her breath, “Time to retire. I’m surrounded by children.”

“So, the grant?” Gwen prompted before Annis got too distracted daydreaming about her retirement.

“Ah, yes,” Annis opened the manila folder she was holding and placed some paperwork on Gwen’s desk. “Pendragon Energy has offered to give us the funds you asked for. Well, actually, the company will be making all the arrangements. They are hiring two experienced cavers to accompany you, and they will even provide funds for any supplies and equipment you require, as well as per diem for meals for you and up to three grad assistants while you work in the cave.”

Gwen sat back in her chair with a scoff. “Why on earth would an oil company want to do so much to support the minor research venture of a paleontology professor?”

Eyebrows quirking, Annis slid the grant papers across the desk toward Gwen. “According to their Vice President, Morgana Pendragon, who approved your grant…” Annis pointed at the bottom of the cover letter now attached to Gwen’s grant application. Gwen read the words as Annis spoke them aloud, “Sibling rivalry and spite.”

******

The early morning sun peeked over the ridge that marked the entrance to Windal Cavern, causing Arthur Pendragon, professor of geophysics at Lomswick University, to squint as he peered down the road, watching for the rest of the exploration party to arrive. He had received an unexpected letter the week before from his half-sister, Morgana, who ran the oil and gas company their father had built, Pendragon Energy.

When Arthur read the letter, he wasn’t certain at first whether it was a serious, official letter from the energy company or simply a joke from his sister. They had a history of teasing one another and playing practical jokes that sometimes went too far.

His blood pressure still rose whenever he recalled the time when Morgana had forged their father’s signature on transfer papers, and convinced the headmaster and the entire faculty that Arthur would not be returning to school after the summer holiday. He fell behind on maths that year, because by the time Arthur realized what Morgana had done and re-enrolled, the top class was full. Their father probably could have stepped in and insisted that Arthur be placed in the top class, but Uther had decided Arthur needed to suffer consequences from the practical joking, since his previous prank on Morgana had nearly resulted in her being arrested.

Neither Arthur nor Morgana had pranked one another since they were teenagers, but the text of the letter gave Arthur pause and made him wonder for a minute whether Morgana had decided to restart their old tradition. 

His and Morgana’s careers were tangentially related: he was a geophysicist and she worked for a company that drilled for oil and gas to provide electricity for this part of the country. Pendragon Energy had contracts with companies in Norway to import oil, but Morgana worked for the division that focused on local resources. Their father had always favoured Arthur and groomed him to one day take over the business, but Arthur preferred science to business and found himself drawn to the research opportunities that academia provided. Morgana, on the other hand, thrived on the cutthroat competition of the business world. She rose quickly through the ranks of the family business and was now an Executive Vice President, though Arthur knew she was gunning for the COO position and was bitter that Uther still didn’t trust her to be his second in command.

Her letter to Arthur, therefore, could be on the level, but Morgana knew all the right terminology to draw him in and trick him into looking foolish in front of their father.

_ Dear Dr. Pendragon, _

_ Pendragon Energy is proud to be the United Kingdom’s foremost provider of locally sourced oil. The company is constantly researching new locations for environmentally sound drilling operations. The area to the southwest of Lomswick, England contains geographical features consistent with the presence of oil fields. Previously, the cost of exploring the area was prohibitive; however, a recent seismic event opened up large areas of Windal Cavern. Our geophysicists have been following your research, and your development of techniques for seismic and ERT surveying from within karst formations would provide a cost-effective method of discovering whether pockets of oil are present. _

_ Pendragon Energy would like to fully fund a research study mapping the area surrounding Windal Cavern, providing you share your findings with the understanding that our company will use that information to decide whether installing a drilling operation would be beneficial, both to company profits and to the local economy. _

After this brief introduction, the letter went on to give specific details about what information the company required and exactly what type of funding would be provided. It all fit in perfectly with Arthur’s current research project and, frankly, sounded too good to be true. Which was why Arthur believed it was most likely an elaborate prank from his sister, until he was flipping through the enclosed documents on local topology and financial statements, and a handwritten letter slipped out.

_ Dearest brother of mine, _

_ I know what you’re thinking— Is this on the level? Is Morgana reverting to teenhood and pranking the hell out of me? Trust me, I’d be thinking the same thing. When Leon approached me with this idea, I fought him tooth and nail. There was no way I would provide the funds to advance my brother’s academic “career.” _

Oh, she was good. Arthur could picture her superior sneer as she put quotes around the word career. She did love pointing out that choosing to remain at university beyond graduation was hardly a worthy goal.

_ Honestly, I was willing to pay more for transportation and housing to bring in any other expert from any other part of the world. Unfortunately, Leon assured me that you are currently the only geophysicist he could find conducting this type of research. So, to my absolute horror, I was forced to offer you this position. However, just to balance out the scales, I am also funding the research—in the same cave, at the same time!—of your colleague, Gwen Smith. I know you used to fancy her, and I know she rejected you, so perhaps sharing a research space with the source of your humiliation will knock enough of that annoying cockiness out of you to make you tolerable. _

Arthur actually snorted aloud as he read that last bit. He had always enjoyed spending time with Gwen. He loved her passion for her work and her sense of humour, and of course, she was a beautiful woman, so when they were back in graduate school, he had asked her out a couple of times. And yes, her initial rejection of his advances had stung, but they were able to move past that awkward stage and had since become decent friends. So take that, Morgana! Arthur smiled, picturing her face when she realised that he and Gwen actually enjoyed spending time together.

_ I’m going to send Leon to supervise you at first. I have to protect the company’s investment, after all. I know you’re not used to taking instructions from anyone, but please don’t take out your superiority issues on poor Leon. He’s just doing his job, and although he may not be leading the field in cutting edge research, please remember that he is also a geophysicist, and treat him with the respect he deserves. _

Now she was just being annoying. Arthur had met Leon Abrams several times, and of course he respected him. He was quite knowledgeable in the field of energy geophysics. And besides, Morgana knew that Arthur would never treat anyone with disrespect unless they first proved unworthy of his respect. Like she had done. Many times.

The sound of tires crunching along the gravel road approaching the cavern jarred Arthur out of his remembrances. A truck that he didn’t recognise drove up. He wasn’t sure if his sister would join Leon and the team of cavers she had hired on this first day of the project. Though it was hard for her to get away from the office, she might not be able to resist the chance to boss him around. As the truck pulled up in front of him, however, he saw that Morgana was not present. Leon was driving two men, who must be the cavers.

As soon as the truck stopped, a man with long, brown hair pulled back into a ponytail hopped out. Arthur’s eyes were drawn to his physique. He wore jeans that hugged his hips and a form fitting shirt that emphasized his lean, muscled build, which was exactly Arthur’s type. He bounded over to Arthur with a gorgeous broad grin and extended his hand. “Hey! You must be Arthur! I’m Gwaine Green and this is my partner in caves— but not crime _ — _ he’s far too straight laced for that sort of nonsense.”

The other man climbed out of the truck to shake Arthur’s hand. “I’m Percy.” Though Percy was quite burly and muscled, Arthur was surprised by the hesitancy of his handshake. “Um, Percy Fisher,” he added, as he seemed to realise he needed to say more than just his first name.

The moment Arthur released his hand, Percy headed back to the truck and started unloading equipment, so Arthur turned to greet Leon.

“Did my sister send a perfectly typed and possibly color coded list of instructions to make sure I’m not wasting a bit of Pendragon Energy’s valuable time or money?”

Leon laughed and reached back into the truck to pull out a thick, white binder. Arthur scrunched his nose in disdain as he took the binder and started flipping through it. “It’s a good thing I studied for six years to get a PhD and have spent the last nine years researching and teaching so I might have a chance at becoming as accomplished in the field as my brilliant sister.”

Gwaine laughed. “I only met Morgana once, but she didn’t seem that bad. Does she only put the superior attitude on for you?”

“Yes,” Arthur said with a wry grin. “Lucky me.”

Another car approached, and they all looked up at the sound. It was Gwen and two younger women Arthur didn’t recognise, though he guessed they were graduate students she’d brought along to help with her research. As Gwen got out of the car, she pulled her long curls into a ponytail, shoved on a helmet with a light on the front and, before coming over to greet the men, popped open the boot and started pulling water bottles out of an ice chest.

“Oh lord, she’s hot,” Gwaine muttered beside Arthur. “I call dibs!” Arthur flinched at Gwaine’s sexist remark, and decided maybe he wasn’t as attractive as he originally thought, but before he could say anything, Gwaine shook his head and corrected himself. “Sorry, that was… I’m still learning to kick those old habits.” He took a deep breath and tried again, “She looks like she’s got some experience with this type of work, and I find that fascinating. I’d really like to get to know her.”

Arthur stared, a smile slowly spreading across his face, as Gwaine quickly moved on to help Percy unload their equipment. He was impressed by Gwaine’s willingness to admit he was being rude and to change his tack so quickly. He turned his smile toward Gwen as she approached him and Leon to introduce herself and her students.

“This is Elena Godwyn.” She indicated the blonde woman leaning into the backseat of the car, shoving one of Gwen’s cold water bottles into her rucksack. Elena gave a friendly wave when she heard her name. “And Mithian Nemeth.”

The dark haired woman shook Leon’s hand and then Arthur’s. “Elena and I are graduate assistants in the paleontology department. We’ve been helping Gwen with her research.” She turned to Arthur. “I hear we have you to thank for this incredible opportunity.”

“Me?” Arthur was confused.

Mithian cocked her head. “Yes, for being such a devilish child that your sister is still trying to get back at you twenty years later.”

Arthur nodded, carefully avoiding rolling his eyes. It seemed Morgana had put a lot of work into making sure his colleagues for this project were on her side. He hoped the sibling rivalry jokes were finished and would not follow them into the cave.

A sharp whistle from Gwaine drew everyone’s attention and he motioned for them to gather around him. “Before we enter the cave, I wanted to go over some safety procedures. I know Morgana gave you a rundown of the risks and had each of you sign a release form, but I’m less concerned with the legal ramifications and more with the personal safety of everyone here _ — _ including Percy and myself. We don’t want to have to put ourselves at risk if one of you foolishly falls into a crevice or something.

“First of all, unless Percy or I tell you otherwise, everyone must wear a safety helmet at all times.”

Arthur was a fairly experienced caver himself. He had conducted his research in several caverns around the UK and even a few in Italy. He also knew that Gwen had explored Windal Cavern many times, but they still respected the dangers enough to pay close attention to Gwaine’s lecture. Once Gwaine had finished, they all donned their safety helmets, pulled on their rucksacks, and headed into the cave.

The group trudged single file down the steep, narrow passage to get to the first open chamber of the cavern. As the passage darkened, they shone their torches onto the ground before them, carefully picking their way around the many rocks of various sizes in their path. Unlike caves that had been cleared as commercial, tourist attractions, Windal Cavern retained its original, rough form. When they reached the small opening that led into the first open chamber of the cavern, Gwaine led the way and the others followed, squeezing through one at a time. Percy stood behind the group, shining his torch toward the opening.

Arthur noticed something on the limestone wall, just above the crack they were climbing into. “Wait a minute. Is that writing?” He shone his own torch to illuminate the pattern, and his heart flipped. “Does that say Arthur?”

Percy leaned in over his shoulder to get a closer look. “Looks more like ‘letter’ to me.”

Shaking her head as she paused with one foot through the crevice, Gwen explained, “A group of archeologists from the university decided years ago that it says Father. And see these lines underneath? That’s probably the remnants of an arrow. And judging by the erosion of the carving, they decided it was written here sometime during the Middle Ages.”

“Oh yeah, I see Father now,” said Percy. “I wonder if someone was trying to direct their father into the cave, or warning others that their father likes to hide in the cave?” He and Gwen shared an amused grin at his suggestion.

Arthur ran his fingers over the carving. He still thought it looked more like his name, but he could sort of see Father as well. But something Gwen said still didn’t sit quite right with him.

“Wait, did you say archeologists studied this carving years ago?”

Gwen pulled away from the crevice she had started to enter so she could stand up straight again. “Yeah, way back in the Forties, I think. Shortly after the cavern was first discovered.”

“But these letters weren’t here before.”

“Of course they were.”

“No,” Arthur insisted. “I’ve been in this cave dozens of times, and I would have noticed my name carved beside the entrance.” Gwen snickered and gave him a pitying look, so Arthur corrected himself. “Okay, whatever. It says Father, not Arthur _ — _ but still, to me it looked like Arthur, and I would have noticed that before today.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Arthur.” Gwen chuckled again. “That carving has been there for hundreds of years. I’ve seen it many times before today. I could send you some articles that have photographs of it, if you like.” She ducked down to follow the others into the large chamber.

Arthur took one last look at the letters in the wall and squeezed through the crevice after Gwen. He was certain he would have noticed his name carved on the wall of the cave before, but if there had been articles written about the carving, it had surely been there for years like Gwen said. Maybe he had always had his head down, watching his feet on the uneven ground before?

Once the whole group had assembled in the first chamber, Gwaine pressed on through the remaining caverns that had been open before the earthquake until they reached the newly opened crevice. He double checked all their safety equipment and then led them into the new section. The limestone rock was surprisingly thin between the old and the new sections, and once they edged their way into the chamber, the sight before them prompted gasps all around.

This section of the cave had obviously benefitted from being closed off from visitors for many years. While the areas they had previously visited did contain the usual formations such as stalactites and stalagmites, years of people traipsing through the cave, touching the walls and stones around them and depositing oils from their skin, had caused the formations to stop growing. The lustre had gone from all of the surfaces, and some formations were even chipped and broken.

This chamber remained untouched. Perhaps humans had never seen it before. A thin layer of water shone on the surface of each stalactite, and tiny droplets hung, waiting to fall, leaving their mineral deposits both above and below. The group of explorers stood silent, awed by the sight, and in the silence, a slight trickling of water could be heard.

Gwaine shone his torch toward the opposite wall and uttered a breathy, “Wow.” A massive flowstone hung from the ceiling, almost like a set of sheer draperies. Shimmering trails of water slid down the formation into a small pool below, leaving behind deposits of calcium carbonate and, judging from the almost translucent sheen, Arthur suspected gypsum as well.

Hesitant to disturb the majestic beauty of this cavern, Arthur and the others remained rooted to the spot where they had first entered for several long moments, choosing to explore its features with their torches and their eyes alone.

Finally, Gwaine spoke in a hushed and reverent tone. “There do appear to be a couple of openings: one just beyond the large flowstone, and a thinner crevice between the columns to our left.” Arthur followed Gwaine’s torch with his eyes without moving his feet. Gwaine continued, “The one by the flowstone seems most promising. This little one is probably just a shallow crack in the wall. Now, we don’t want to cause any damage to this living section of the cave, so I suggest the rest of you stay right here and wait while Percy and I scout ahead.”

“Would you mind taking my phone with you?” Leon asked. “I’ve been taking photos to put into a report for Morgana. Could you photograph each new passage and chamber you find?” He handed his mobile to Percy, and added, “Provided it’s safe for you to do so, of course.”

Percy put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder to shift past him, and then he and Gwaine picked their way carefully across the damp floor to the opposite side. Soon they disappeared behind the flowstone.

“Do you see any evidence of prehistoric life in this chamber, Gwen?” Mithian asked.

Gwen shrugged. “It’s hard to tell from here.”

While Gwen and her grad assistants shone their torches around, looking for evidence that animals had ever lived in this section of the cave, Arthur tried to shine his own into the crevice closer to them to discover whether it went farther than what they could see. That part of the wall was a little duller looking than the rest of this area. Perhaps animals or even people had been in here and had brushed against the wall, stopping the trickle of water and minerals. He couldn’t tell, however, whether the crevice opened beyond what he could see, so he switched off his torch.

Just before he glanced away, he thought he saw a flicker of light. His heart leapt, and he stared in that direction, but he didn’t see the light again. He decided it must have been a reflection off one of the women’s torches, and chuckled to himself before turning to look again at the formation across the cavern.

“Hello?”

Arthur’s head whipped back to the crevice. Someone had called out from within it.

“Hello?” Arthur echoed. “Who’s there?”

“Arthur?” Leon turned to look at him. “Who are you talking to?”

Shining his torch into the crevice and leaning forward, Arthur asked, “Didn’t you hear that? There was a voice from back there.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Leon said.

“I didn’t either.” Gwen looked at Mithian and Elena, who both shook their heads. “Maybe Gwaine and Percy found another passage that wraps around this cavern, though.” She raised her voice. “Gwaine? Percy? Is that you?”

“Hoo-oo!” Gwaine’s voice called out from the opposite side of the chamber where they had disappeared. “We found a tunnel!”

Gwen looked back at Arthur. “Maybe they said something and it echoed this direction.” She gave Arthur’s shoulder a nudge. “Or maybe you’re just hearing things.”

“Maybe,” Arthur murmured, gazing toward the crevice intently. He really thought he had heard someone’s voice. And it didn’t sound like Gwaine or Percy. He looked at the ground between the wall and where he stood. He thought he could walk over there carefully enough without causing any damage. Besides, that wall faced the field Morgana wanted surveyed, so if there was, in fact, another chamber there, it might be the best location to set up his seismic equipment.

He had just about convinced himself that investigating would be okay when he heard the voice again, more distinct this time.

“Will? Is that you?”

“There!” Arthur’s hand shot up, pointing to the crevice. He didn’t take his eyes off the opening, although he no longer saw the flickering light. “Did you hear that?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Elena said, and Mithian agreed with her.

Gwen put a gentle hand on his forearm. “Arthur?” She waited until he looked back at her. “What did you hear?”

“Someone asked for Will.”

The way Gwen’s eyebrows pulled down with concern told Arthur she had also not heard the voice. She shook her head, the crease in her forehead deepening. “No one said anything.”

He pulled his arm away from her. “Well, I’m going in.”

“Gwaine told us to stay put,” she insisted.

Leon added, “If we walk around, we might damage the cave.”

“I’ll stay away from any live formations.” Arthur pointed his torch at the ground and took a few tentative steps. “It’ll be fine. I’ll be right back, okay?”

He walked, more boldly now, to the opening in the cavern wall. He couldn’t explain it to Gwen and Leon, but he felt drawn to the crevice. As if he was meant to hear the voice calling out. Perhaps the others couldn’t hear it because this particular quest was meant for him alone.

Unable to fit through without some maneuvering, Arthur removed his rucksack and held it to his side, turning and sliding into the crevice, his torch lighting his way. The passage through the limestone was only about a metre deep, and once through, he stepped into another open area, this one much smaller than the one he had just left.

The chamber was empty aside from a few typical cave formations. And, unlike in the previous chamber, there was no dripping water; these formations were long dead. A few of the stalactites were even broken off, their ends lying on the ground in pieces. This type of damage was not done by animals, however. Humans had definitely been here before. Was there another entrance to the cave that the scientists and historians who had studied here had somehow missed?

Arthur walked around the perimeter and, along the wall opposite where he had come in, he found his answer. There did appear to be another tunnel out of the chamber, but it had caved in, leaving no space even to crawl through.

So where had the voice come from?

“Hello?” Arthur meant to shout, but his voice came out more hesitant than he intended. “Is someone in here?” He spoke up more this time, but it backfired.

Elena called from the other chamber, “We’re still here, Arthur!” at the same moment as Arthur thought he might have heard a muffled voice from within the chamber where he stood.

He shone his torch in the direction of the voice, suddenly terrified he might find another cave-in with a person trapped beneath, but the cave walls and floor were smooth all around, except for the tunnel directly behind him.

“Who’s there?” Arthur tried again, hoping he wasn’t speaking loudly enough to attract the girls’ attention.

Squinting his eyes in the dark, as if that would help him hear better, Arthur cast his gaze around the chamber. “Hello?” He tried again.

This time, he heard it again. A small, muffled voice. The voice sounded like it was right in front of him, as if someone were speaking into a pillow. Arthur thought it sounded like, “Who is that?” But no one was standing there. Every hair on his arm stood on end. Was it a ghost? Could caves be haunted? Arthur didn’t think he believed in ghosts, but as he waved his hand in front of him, trying to make contact with whoever was speaking, he had to admit, he was definitely leaning toward some sort of supernatural explanation.

Heart suddenly pounding, Arthur decided to take the leap. “Hi,” he spoke barely above a whisper at first, but he cleared his throat and plunged ahead, “my name’s Arthur. What’s your name?”

He held his breath, and the silence that followed his question pressed in on him, mocking his leap of faith into the world of the unexplained. With a shaky sigh, Arthur closed his eyes and shook his head, glad there were no witnesses to his foolish, irrational behaviour. But then he heard the voice again, slightly more distinct this time.

“I’m Merlin.”

Arthur’s eyes flew open, but the cavern was still empty around him. He opened his mouth to speak again, but just then Gwaine emerged from the crevice where Arthur had entered.

“Why am I not surprised you did not stay put like I asked? Can none of you Pendragons take directions? Come on,” he stepped to the side, motioning for Arthur to exit in front of him, “Percy and I found a whole series of passages beyond the large chamber. They’re not as active as that one _ — _ looks like animals have been using them to hide and nest in _ — _ so we should be fine exploring those as long as we don’t touch too much.”

“But _ — _ ” Arthur paused. He didn’t want to tell Gwaine about the voice he’d heard. About Merlin. He wanted to stay and try to talk some more, but he doubted Gwaine would be happy leaving him behind without an explanation. “This chamber is actually in a better location for me to perform the surveying Morgana wants. I’d like to stay and take some measurements.” He started to reach into his rucksack, but Gwaine shook his head.

“We need to stay together today. And besides, those tunnels we found wrap around, heading back this direction, so you might find an even better location.” He jerked his head once again toward the exit. “Come on.”

Arthur’s shoulders sunk with a heavy sigh. He zipped his rucksack closed again and followed Gwaine’s instructions. Before he stepped into the crevice, he looked back at the spot where Merlin’s voice had spoken from, but he still saw nothing. As he and Gwaine rejoined the others to explore the rest of the cave, Arthur barely noticed the formations around him. His attention was still back in that small chamber. Who was Merlin, and how could Arthur hear his voice when no one else could? All Arthur knew as he climbed through the cave passageways was that he had to get back there, alone. He had to talk to Merlin again.

******

At home that evening, Arthur examined the rough map Percy had drawn as they explored. Just as Gwaine said, the tunnels they found did wrap around the main chamber back in the direction of the field Morgana wanted surveyed; however, none of the new areas had quite so prime a location as the small chamber where Arthur had heard the voice speaking to him, which pleased Arthur greatly. He had also been relieved when Gwen discovered several trace fossils from the Quaternary Period in one of the chambers farthest from where he would be working.

Yes, he would still have to focus on the task Morgana had set him, but a thrill rose in his chest as he thought about returning to that chamber with no witnesses hovering over him. He felt like he was meant to find that spot. He had no idea who Merlin might be, or whether he was real or just some sort of delusion Arthur had imagined, but he was anxious to investigate further.

Arthur went through the motions of preparing dinner. He heated some leftover chicken and steamed some broccoli, but he was too excited and nervous to eat much. He had never been one to believe in paranormal phenomena, so he was actually surprised to find himself wondering whether he had made contact with a ghost or a spirit of some sort.

After giving up on eating, Arthur was rinsing his dishes in the sink when he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He quickly dried his hands on the dish towel and fished it out. His lips pursed when he saw the first few lines of a text from Morgana.

_ Did you give Gwaine a hard time today? When I asked how it went, he laughed and said you and I are a lot alike _

Arthur swiped to reply, but his fingers were still too damp, and his phone wouldn’t respond. Growling, he rubbed his hand into his shirt and then jabbed at his screen, typing his retort.

_ If he said we’re alike and you assume that meant I gave him a hard time, doesn’t that say more about you than me? _

He didn’t wait for her to reply. He simply kept typing.

_ I found the best location for our survey and wanted to get started right away, but he insisted I take the full cave tour—which I did, because I’m not as stubborn as my sister _

Arthur waited for Morgana to challenge his accusation. He knew she didn’t care for being called stubborn, but, deep down, he also knew he was just as stubborn as she was _ — _ maybe more so. But apparently, she was too distracted by her bottom line to take his bait.

_ You found a good spot? When will you get started, and how soon can we expect results? _

Resisting the urge to tell her she was impatient as well as stubborn, Arthur simply said he wanted to start tomorrow and that the time required to interpret the results would actually depend on what those results showed. Some types of topology were more straightforward than others, and if she did want to drill in this location, she’d better hope for the more complex type of data. 

They went back and forth for a while, discussing the logistics of the survey. Arthur did not mention the voice he had heard, and he hoped Gwen would not mention it either. She hadn’t asked him anything after he had rejoined the group, so she might have decided he imagined the voice, or she might have forgotten. Either way, he suspected she would not mention anything to his sister.

_ Let me know the moment you have any definitive results,  _ was the last text from Morgana.

Arthur was not surprised that, after her initial taunts, her texts were all business. They had not spoken since Christmas, and before that, the last time they spoke was at their father’s birthday dinner. In a way, he was glad to have this opportunity to prove to her that his work was worthwhile, but having to interact with her on a regular basis might turn out to be more trouble than it was worth.

All night long, as Arthur watched some TV and as he showered and got ready for bed, he felt excited— the way he used to feel as a child the night before his birthday or Christmas, or the way he felt before a date when he was a teenager. At first, Arthur scolded himself mentally for his irrational excitement about whatever awaited him in that cave, but by the time he was settling into bed, he had given in to the giddy feeling, and he fell asleep imagining what might happen when he entered that cavern tomorrow.

******

“Are you sure you don’t want some help setting up your equipment, Arthur?” Percy asked when they all met outside the cave again the next morning.

“No, it’s no problem. I’ve done this many times before. I can set everything up myself.” Arthur pulled the plastic bin of sensors out of his car and placed it on the ground. “You go on and help the paleontology crew.”

“Don’t worry about us,” Mithian called out as she and Elena followed Gwen into the cave. “We’ll meet you guys inside.”

Arthur hoped Percy would not insist on helping, because Arthur was anxious to be alone in his little cavern to try to talk to Merlin again. When Arthur set his rucksack and the case that held the meters on top of the bin, Gwaine raised an eyebrow.

“At least let us help you carry all this equipment, mate.”

Arthur looked at his growing pile of equipment and laughed. “Sure, that would be great. Thanks!”

Entering the cave once again made Arthur’s stomach flutter and his skin tingle. Overnight, he had started to worry that maybe he had imagined the whole thing. What if he hadn’t actually spoken to someone named Merlin yesterday at all? Or what if the connection was a one time thing? The closer they got to his little cavern, the more nervous he felt. 

He resisted the urge to run his finger over the word carved into the limestone. The others might be convinced it said Father, but he couldn’t help wondering— if it did say Arthur, was it a message meant specifically for him?

They arrived at the small chamber, and Gwaine and Percy helped Arthur arrange his equipment along the far wall, but then, thankfully, they left him alone. Ignoring the ERT survey for the moment, Arthur stood in the middle of the chamber where he last heard the voice of Merlin. He was hesitant to speak up while the others were still in earshot. They already thought he was a little odd for insisting on doing his survey completely alone, but if they heard him talking to what they thought was no one, they would certainly believe he was losing his mind. So he waited until he could no longer hear their voices echoing through the main chamber. And then he waited several minutes longer.

Finally, he felt safe enough to reach out once again to the voice he had heard yesterday.

“Hello?” His excitement and nerves made his voice shaky, so he cleared his throat and spoke again, more clearly this time. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

Arthur waited, but no one responded. He called out a few more times, his heart sinking further and further each time, but still there was no voice.

“Merlin?” Arthur invoked the name he had heard the day before, but the silence that followed pressed in on him from all directions, crushing his excitement. He turned toward the back wall and kicked a broken stalactite, cursing loudly. How could he have been so stupid? Talking to ghosts. Of course he had imagined the voice. There was no such thing as ghosts. His face burned as he pulled out his equipment, anxious to get to work and forget the whole ordeal.

Determined to focus all of his energy on the task at hand, Arthur started driving electrodes into the north wall of the cavern. Every time he let his mind wander back to the voice, heat rose in his cheeks. He didn’t want to think about his embarrassing mistake anymore, so, even though he could probably set this equipment up in his sleep, Arthur narrated each task in his mind.

“Plug the sensor wire into the base. Place the base on level ground. Turn on the battery pack.”

He was just starting to connect the resistivity meter to his laptop when he heard the voice again.

“No, don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. There’s plenty of water in the cave.”

Arthur leapt up from the floor, almost knocking over his laptop in the process. He hadn’t imagined it! There really was a ghost named Merlin in this cave. Although, who was he talking to, and why would a ghost need water? Heart racing, Arthur crept closer to the source of the voice.

“You need to get back to the village. To your family. I promise I’ll be fine here.”

Arthur stopped when it sounded like the person speaking stood directly in front of him. He didn’t see anyone, but from this close, he could even hear soft breathing between the words.

“Sarah is going to be angry with me for keeping you away this long. ... Well, you’re probably right, but… Don’t worry about me. You need to go home! … Kiss that baby for me!”

Merlin was clearly talking to someone else, but Arthur could only hear the one voice. Since Merlin was obviously trying to get rid of whoever he was talking to, Arthur waited until Merlin was silent for a bit to make sure he was alone, and then he couldn’t wait any longer. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

After a brief pause, Merlin answered, “Arthur? Is that you?”

Relief flooded Arthur when Merlin responded to him. He  _ hadn’t  _ imagined their connection! “Yes, it’s me. Merlin?”

“Yes,” Merlin breathed out with a nervous chuckle. “You disappeared, so I thought I’d imagined you. Who are you? Are you a spirit?”

Arthur waved his hands in front of him again, trying to make contact with Merlin, but there was nothing there but air. “No, I’m just a regular man. I thought you were a spirit.”

“You thought I was a spirit? Does that mean you can’t see me, either?”

“No, I can’t see anything except the cave around me.” As soon as he spoke, though, Arthur remembered something. “Although, yesterday, when I first came into the cave, I thought I saw a flickering light coming from this chamber, and that’s when I first heard your voice. But then when I came in here, the light was gone. I didn’t see anyone or anything, but I could still hear you.”

“I haven’t seen or heard anything else out of the ordinary. Only your disembodied voice!” Merlin laughed. “Wait, did you say yesterday? When we talked before?”

Arthur nodded. “Yeah, the group I was with pulled me away, and I wasn’t able to come back until this morning.”

Merlin’s voice was hesitant when he responded. “For me, it’s been longer than that. I might have lost track of proper days and nights since I’ve been living in this cavern, but I know it’s been at least eight sleeps since I first talked to you.”

The mystery of Merlin was deepening, and the analytical side of Arthur was thrilled by the prospect of figuring this out. “So what day is it for you? It’s the 14th of September for me.”

“I’m not really sure,” Merlin answered. “Like I said, I’ve lost track of dates living in the cave, but I feel like it’s closer to the middle of October.”

“October? So you’re in the future?” A thrill rose in Arthur at the thought. “Is there some sort of time rift in this cave?” He had loved reading books and watching films about time travel when he was a kid, so the idea that he had somehow stumbled upon a way to talk to someone from the future made him feel like his skin was vibrating. “But wait, you said you’ve been living in the cave? How long have you been here?”

“A couple of months.”

“But if you were living here in mid-September, shouldn’t I be able to see the past version of you?” Arthur’s mind was reeling, trying to piece together the clues about who, where and when Merlin was. If Merlin had been living here in September, he would actually see him, not hear his voice from the future. So maybe they weren’t even living in the same year. “What year is it for you?”

“1336.”

“Thirteen-thir—” Arthur took a step back, stunned at first by this revelation, but then he came to his senses. He had mentioned time travel, so Merlin was making fun of him. “Oh, you’re messing with me.”

“Messing with you?”

“You’re joking, right? It’s not really the 1300s for you.” Arthur was ready to believe his connection with Merlin involved paranormal phenomena of some sort, but a time portal spanning seven hundred years? That was impossible, wasn’t it?

Merlin sounded just as baffled as he was. “Why? What do you mean? What year is it for you?”

“It’s 2019,” Arthur said.

After a few moments of silence, Merlin responded barely above a whisper, “Are you a sorcerer?”

“A sorcerer?” Arthur almost laughed out loud, but he supposed it made sense for someone from the Middle Ages to go straight to magic as the explanation for whatever was happening. Merlin would have no concept of proper science. While time travel was more science fiction, Arthur knew that over the years, some scientists had postulated theories about how time travel might work.

But he didn’t want to overwhelm Merlin with 700 years of scientific knowledge or insult him by mocking his beliefs, so he simply said, “No, I’m not a sorcerer. It’s hard to explain, but in your time, people didn’t have a full understanding of how the world works, so they used to attribute things they couldn’t explain to magic. Magic isn’t actually real.”

Again, Merlin was silent for a while, and Arthur hoped he didn’t feel insulted. How could he explain scientific discovery without sounding condescending? But before he could even begin, Merlin said, “I’m a sorcerer.”

Great. This was going to be harder than Arthur thought.

“That’s why I’m hiding in this cave. Magic is forbidden. The law says that anyone caught using magic will be burned at the stake.”

Arthur knew his country’s sad history of burning and drowning those accused of witchcraft, and he wondered what sort of ‘magic’ Merlin thought he was doing. Maybe creating potions? Or incantations?

“I’ve been studying magic in secret for many years. I was born with magic, and I’ve gotten really good at hiding it. But this summer, my friend Will’s son fell out of a tree and broke his leg. I didn’t even think. I used my magic to heal him right in front of the village elders.”

As Merlin told his story, Arthur listened quietly. Whatever Merlin had done that summer, he truly seemed to believe it worked. He believed he had healed this child’s leg. Most likely, the leg wasn’t actually broken to begin with, but if Merlin had risked his life to practise the rituals he obviously believed deeply in, who was Arthur to tear down his convictions?

“Wow! I’m sure your friend was very appreciative.” Ugh. Arthur cringed. He had tried to sound impressed, but it just came out sarcastic and insincere.

Merlin must have picked up on his disbelief, because he sighed. “Look, I don’t know what your world must be like so far into the future. If you don’t even think magic is real, those in power must have won. Their severe punishment of any hint of magic use must have caused sorcerers to go so deep into hiding that the average person doesn’t even believe magic exists.”

Arthur had to admit to himself that Merlin’s explanation made some sort of sense. If anyone suspected of practising magical rituals were burned or drowned or hanged, then naturally, they would take those practises underground.

“I’m sorry, Merlin,” Arthur said. “You’re right. I have no understanding of your beliefs, because I haven’t been exposed to them. I’d like to hear more about your magic.”

He thought he heard Merlin blow out a breath, as if he didn’t believe he had changed Arthur’s mind about magic, but without being able to see Merlin’s expression, he couldn’t be sure. When Merlin spoke, however, he simply changed the subject. “At the moment, I’m more interested in figuring out how and why you and I are able to talk.”

“Yeah, that’s been puzzling me, too.” Arthur laughed. Unsure how to proceed, he decided to question Merlin as if he accepted that magic existed 700 years ago and that Merlin actually was a sorcerer. “Did you do something that may have caused this? With your magic?”

He thought he could hear Merlin’s smile when he responded, but he might have been imagining it. “Not that I know of. That’s why I asked if you were a sorcerer. I thought maybe you had opened this window in time.”

“Window in time,” Arthur repeated Merlin’s words. “I like that. Although,” he gave a disgruntled chuckle, “it’s more like a telephone through time.” He shook his head, realising that word would mean nothing to Merlin. “That’s a future thing. A telephone is a way of talking to someone over a long distance without actually seeing them.”

This time, Arthur definitely heard Merlin blow out a frustrated breath. “Well, I wish it were more like a window, instead of a… telephone. I much prefer talking with someone when I can see their face. I can’t tell if you think I’m crazy, or if you actually believe me about my magic.”

Heart sinking, Arthur pursed his lips to hold back an audible sigh. He had only been speaking to Merlin for a short time, and he knew next to nothing about him, but it already hurt to feel he had disappointed him.

“I’m standing in a cave talking to a disembodied voice from centuries in the past, Merlin. It’s highly likely that I’m the one who’s crazy.”

Had that helped or hurt Merlin further? Arthur strained to hear any sort of reaction.

“Perhaps we’re both crazy?” Merlin didn’t actually sound upset. More amused, which filled Arthur with unexplained joy. Was it possible to be attracted to a disembodied voice? It was rather a sexy sounding voice. At that thought, Arthur felt his cheeks burn, and he was thankful for once they were speaking through a time telephone rather than a window.

“So if neither one of us caused this on purpose, could it have been an accident?” Arthur wondered. “I don’t really know how magic works. Do you think you could have been— I don’t know— reaching out for help, and—”

“And somehow my magic thought a random stranger 700 years in the future would be able to help me?”

“I don’t know! Five minutes ago, I thought magic was something out of fairy tales. How do I know what sort of crazy logic it follows?”

Arthur still didn’t really think magic existed in the form he had read about in stories all his life— wizards waving a wand to make an object fly across a room, or witches brewing a potion to sprout warts all over someone’s face— but playing along with Merlin was fun, and who knew? Maybe some form of magic was causing this window in time, enabling him to talk with a man from the 14th century who was being persecuted as a sorcerer.

“Well, sometimes sorcerers are able to communicate with each other non-verbally. Sometimes over a short distance. Like your telephone.” Merlin sounded excited to make this connection with the future, so Arthur didn’t bother pointing out that telephones actually required the people to talk out loud. “But I’ve never heard about any that let people talk across time.”

They were both quiet in thought for a few moments. Arthur tried to remember anything he had read about actual scientific theories of time travel, rather than simply science fiction. There were some theories about creating wormholes by bending space-time with gravity. And of course, Einstein predicted that time passed differently relative to proximity to gravitational fields. But unless this cave somehow had either stronger or weaker gravity than the rest of the earth, neither of those theories were at play here.

When Merlin spoke, Arthur felt chills along his arms, because just as Arthur was considering the gravity of the cave, Merlin said, “Maybe it’s something about this cave. Maybe the window exists in this location, between these two times, and we just happened to be fortunate enough to be here to experience it.”

“Almost like fate,” murmured Arthur, biting back a smile, because he could hardly believe he was saying those words. He didn’t believe in things like fate and magic. What was happening to him?

“I suppose so.”

Arthur couldn’t quite read Merlin’s tone, and he closed his eyes wishing even more that he could see Merlin. See his expressions. Or even just know what he looked like. His eyes flew open. Why should he sit here wondering?

“What do you look like?” His words came out rushed and too eager, and his cheeks burned again, but he didn’t care. “How old are you? What color is your hair? Are you tall or short?”

He expected Merlin to laugh at him, but of course, he didn’t. “I’m 29 years old. I have dark hair that gets curly when I let it grow too long. I’m a bit taller than some of the men in my village, but I wouldn’t say I’m tall. I’m too skinny. Or so my mother always tells me.” He made a sound halfway between a laugh and a grunt. “Oh, and my ears. I have dreadful ears that stick out like handles from my head.” This time, he actually did laugh. “The butcher’s son used to call me Baskethead. He said my head looked like a basket full of wool.”

Arthur smiled, trying to picture a man with a shock of curly black hair and large ears. It was too hard, though, to form an image from just a few physical traits.

“What about you?” Merlin asked. “What do you look like?”

“Let’s see.” It was hard to decide how to describe oneself to someone who would never actually see you. “I have blond hair that just sticks out everywhere like straw when I let it grow too long.” Merlin laughed, and Arthur could not contain his pleased grin. “I have blue eyes and a crooked nose. It got broken when I was eight years old. My sister kneed me in the face, believe it or not.”

“Ouch,” Merlin said.

“Yeah. That was not fun.” Arthur ran his finger over the ridge in his nose. “Do you have any sisters?”

“No. No sisters or brothers.”

Arthur scrunched his nose. “Lucky.”

Merlin sounded sad when he responded. “I don’t know. I think I would have liked to have had a sibling. Even if we did fight some.”

They talked for a while about their childhoods. Merlin had been lonely— always having to hide his magic from his friends. And Arthur told him about his and Morgana’s constant need to compete for their father’s approval. Then they talked about their jobs. Merlin was a farmer, which sounded nice to Arthur, until he realised the land and the crops were owned by the lord of the nearby manor, and Merlin didn’t actually get to keep and sell the crops he raised. Merlin was fascinated by the concept of a university professor who spent his days learning and teaching others.

Arthur asked Merlin to tell him more about his magic and how it worked.

“I was just a baby when my mother realised I had magic,” Merlin explained. “She had made a little rattle by putting some stones into a dried gourd. She would shake it in front of me when I was crying. One day, she was in the middle of washing clothes, so she tried singing to me instead of shaking the rattle, but I guess I wanted that rattle. I reached my hand out toward where it sat, and it just flew from the table and shook itself in the air above the little basket she laid me in.”

Shaking his head, Arthur resisted laughing. It sounded like a delightful story a mother might tell her son at bedtime. The magical adventures of Baby Merlin. His own mother had died giving birth to him, so Arthur never had a mother to sing to him or comfort him at night when he woke up scared. But he decided that, if his mother had told him such lovely bedtime stories, he might have believed them. At one time, anyway.

Merlin continued his story. “It terrified her, of course. Magic was against the law, and there was no way to explain that to a baby. And as I grew, it only got worse. Can you imagine a toddler throwing a tantrum when he has the ability to magically throw objects around the room?”

Arthur wondered how far Merlin’s mother had carried these tall tales of his magical youth.

“But somehow, she managed to keep my abilities hidden from everyone else, and as I got older I learned to control them. I only practised inside our house with the windows covered or sometimes deep in the woods.”

What kinds of skills was Merlin practising, Arthur wondered? Was it actually possible he did have some sort of supernatural abilities? Before Arthur could ask for clarification, though, Gwaine appeared at the entrance to the cavern.

“How’s it going in here?” He took one look at Arthur sitting in the middle of the floor, his equipment half set up and forgotten against the far wall, and held out his hands in confusion. “Did you finish? What are you doing just sitting there?”

Arthur stood abruptly. “Gwaine, hey!” He said that so Merlin would know he was talking to someone else. “Uh, no, I didn’t finish.” Arthur wanted more uninterrupted time to talk to Merlin, and he wanted to cover for the fact that he had accomplished nothing all morning.

“The initial ERT survey readings were inconclusive, so I had to do some recalculating,” he lied, knowing Gwaine probably didn’t know enough about geophysical surveying to understand. “I got some low resistivity readings that could mean less fractured rock, or it could simply mean the fractures are filled with clay. I’m going to have to reset the node array and try again.”

Gwaine nodded along with a blank look on his face, and when Arthur finished, he simply said, “Sure, mate, no problem. Gwen and her team are planning to keep working this afternoon, too, so Percy and I are sticking around. But for now, we all decided we need some sunlight, so we’re having a picnic lunch up by the truck.” He motioned back toward the cavern entrance. “Come join us. You’re looking a little dazed. I think you could use some fresh air as well.”

He quirked his head and turned sideways to give Arthur room to squeeze past him. Arthur suspected he wouldn’t take no for an answer, so he responded in a way that would make sense to Gwaine, but would also explain to Merlin why he was disappearing for a while. “Okay, I’ll join you outside for a quick lunch, but I will need to work in here the rest of the afternoon.”

Arthur had to admit, the fresh air and sunlight did feel good, but it also made him feel even worse for Merlin, who had been stuck living in the cave night and day for the last few months. As they ate, the others were laughing and joking around, but Arthur kept thinking about Merlin and his magic. If Arthur was able to accept that he was talking through a time portal in a cave to a man from the Middle Ages, why was it so hard for him to accept that Merlin had some sort of Harry Potter-type powers? He should have asked if he had a wand. Arthur snickered at that thought.

“What are you giggling about over there, Pendragon?” Gwaine called from the rock he had sprawled out on. “You didn’t laugh at Elena’s story about the time she was so sleep-deprived, she jumped into a pond to rescue what she thought was her grandmother’s dog, but Gwen starts talking about fossilised insect tracks and suddenly, you can’t contain your laughter? What gives?”

Shrugging and shaking his head, Arthur said, “Sorry, my mind was somewhere else. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

Gwaine narrowed his eyes for a moment, but then nodded his acceptance of Arthur’s apology. However, he leaned forward, resting one elbow on his knee and said to the group in a conspiratorial tone, “Don’t anyone tell him what was actually in the lake.” He flashed a victorious grin to Arthur, and then started talking about his recent trip to Italy.

After they finished eating, when they were packing up their trash and preparing to return to the cave, Gwen approached Arthur. “You doing okay? You do seem a little distracted.”

“I’m fine!” Arthur tried to blow off her concern, but Gwen didn’t look away. She held his gaze, tilting her head slightly. She wasn’t prying, but she seemed to be letting him know she was there to listen if he needed to talk.

But Arthur didn’t want to tell her about Merlin. He didn’t want to tell anyone, and not only because he was certain they wouldn’t believe him and might even recommend he seek out help for delusional behaviour. There was something special— ironically, almost magical— about his relationship with Merlin, and he wasn’t ready to share that with anyone just yet.

So he decided to stick with the story he’d come up with for Gwaine earlier, although he actually felt bad lying to Gwen, whereas he hadn’t minded lying to Gwaine.

“My surveying isn’t going as smoothly as I’d hoped.” Technically not a lie? The surveying wasn’t going smoothly, because he hadn’t actually started any surveying yet. “And I don’t like Morgana to see that I do sometimes make mistakes.” He shrugged with a sheepish grin. There. A little truth thrown in always helped to maintain a lie.

Returning his grin, Gwen said, “I guess I can understand that. Your sister does seem very intimidating.” She put a gentle hand on Arthur’s upper arm. “Well, listen, I don’t know much about either seismic or ERT surveying, but if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know, okay?”

“Thanks, I will,” Arthur said with a genuine smile. He almost wished Morgana could have seen that conversation. She’d believed working with Gwen would be difficult for Arthur, when nothing could be further from the truth. If Arthur did decide to confide in anyone about his conversations with Merlin, Gwen would probably be the first one he told.

When they got back to his little cavern and Arthur parted from the group, Gwaine called out to him, “Good luck with your node array, mate. If that fractured clay keeps resisting you, just move on. Take your nodes and go survey them on your own.”

Arthur had to laugh at Gwaine’s ability to remember the random geophysics terminology he had thrown at him earlier and turn it into some sort of dirty joke. He would fit in well with some of the 18 year olds in Arthur’s intro class.

As soon as he entered his cavern, however, Arthur quickly forgot about Gwaine and the others. His stomach was turning flips at the thought of talking with Merlin again. He was definitely developing a crush on this magical, medieval man. He waited until the rest of the group was out of earshot, and then said, “Merlin? I’m back.”

He held his breath in the silence that followed, as the thought occurred to him that their window might have closed, but he relaxed when Merlin’s voice rang out clear in the empty cavern.

“Arthur? You’re back?”

“Yeah, sorry. Gwaine— one of the guys helping us in the cave— came to get me to join them for lunch, so I had to go outside for about half an hour. I tried to let you know what was happening before I left. Did you hear when I was talking to Gwaine?”

“Yes, I heard you say you were going to eat lunch.” Merlin sounded unhappy, which saddened Arthur, but what did Merlin expect him to do? Tell Gwaine he couldn’t join them for lunch, because he didn’t want to leave his new invisible friend?

“That was three days ago, Arthur.”

Arthur’s heart sank. “What?”

He heard Merlin take a deep breath. “Three days you were gone. I guess our window in time is a little off-kilter.”

So Merlin had been sitting in the cave for three whole days, all alone and not knowing whether he would ever get to talk to Arthur again? “I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have left if I had known so much time would pass for you.”

“Are you going to live in the cave now, too, Arthur?” Merlin sounded amused.

“Maybe.”

Arthur knew he was being irrational, but he didn’t want to leave Merlin alone again. Last night when he went home for the evening, eight days had passed for Merlin. And just now, he was only gone for half an hour and another three days passed. Was the time between them passing at inconsistent rates, or was it speeding up on Merlin’s end? If he went home tonight, would Merlin be alone for weeks?

“Will’s supplying me with food once a week. If you decide to stay, who will keep you fed? Would Gwaine bring you food?”

With a mirthless laugh, Arthur said, “No, he’d probably go tell my sister I lost my mind. Gwen might bring me food, though.”

“Are you going to tell Gwen about me to explain why you want to stay?”

“No,” Arthur shook his head, “I’d just tell the others I need to stay a while longer to finish my work, and then I could text her in the morning. That’s a way to send messages quickly. I could tell her I fell asleep here and ask her to pick up some breakfast for me.”

“Are you going to do that every day?”

Arthur sighed. “I don’t know. I just know this window must have opened for a reason, and I don’t want to leave you until we know why.”

After a few moments, Merlin responded with a quiet, “You don’t have to do that, but thanks.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon talking, but this time, Arthur actually did set up his ERT node array and run some tests, so his excuse for sticking around this evening would be more plausible. As he worked, he told Merlin about his studies and the joy he got from researching and discovering new techniques to explore the world around him and from sharing that joy with his students.

After that, he sat quietly while Merlin told him more about his magic. This time, Arthur tried to keep an open mind. He was able to believe he was communicating with Merlin across time, so why not believe in magic? At first, Arthur had wondered whether Merlin was fooling himself or even simply lying, but as he got to know him, Arthur had come to trust Merlin. So he listened, without judgment and without analysis.

Merlin told him how he had started with simple tasks like moving objects and lighting fires, and gradually, he had moved on to sweeping the floor of their cottage with a flick of his wrist, and creating a self-stirring spoon to help his mother cook. Then, when he was twelve, a wandering tribe of Druids had set up camp deep in the woods near where Merlin used to practise his magic. They had taught him actual spells and healing magic and how to use his magic as a defensive weapon as well as a helpful tool.

“When they packed up to move on, they asked me to go with them. The elders said my magic was the most powerful they had ever seen, and they wanted me to stay with them to keep studying and training, but…” Merlin sighed. “I was twelve years old, and I had never even left my village. I was afraid to leave my friends and my mother.”

“Couldn’t your mother have gone with you?”

“She wasn’t welcome,” Merlin said bluntly. “Druids only travel with their own kind. I mean, now I understand. They’ve been hunted and tormented for hundreds of years. Of course they have trouble trusting outsiders. But I do sometimes wonder how my life might have been different if I had gone with them. I wouldn’t have had to hide who I am. Using magic is as natural to me as breathing. Can you imagine having to be conscious of who is watching or listening every time you take a breath?”

Arthur could not. “That must have been so hard. I certainly wouldn’t want to live that way.” Although, Arthur felt like he had lived a similar, though not as severe, experience being bisexual. When he was thirteen and developed his first crush on a boy, he was terrified someone might find out. The other boys, and frankly the girls and many adults, were vicious when it came to jokes and teasing and tearing down anyone they even suspected might be gay. Oddly, when Morgana figured it out, and he was able to admit it out loud, even to the sister he usually despised, he found relief. And for all of her pranks and teasing, she never mocked him about it. For that, he would always be grateful to her.

“Was your mother the only other person who knew?”

With a small laugh, Merlin said, “She was until about a year after the Druids left. When I was thirteen, I was sometimes a bit absentminded. As most thirteen year olds are!” Arthur joined him in laughter, because he remembered quite a few forgotten assignments and misplaced notes home during his early teen years.

“Well, one time when I was working in the orchard with my friend Will, I accidentally dropped a basket of apples, and, without thinking, I used a summoning spell to pull them back into the basket. Will saw me.”

“What did he do?”

Chuckling, Merlin said, “He yelled, ran at me, and tackled me to the ground!”

“Oh no,” Arthur gasped.

“No, he wasn’t angry,” Merlin corrected him. “He was so excited! Somehow to thirteen year old Will, my having magic meant his life would drastically improve.”

They laughed. “From that point on, he would act as lookout, and I would use magic to draw the ripe apples from the trees directly into the baskets. We moved on to magically completing all our chores, and then, a few times, we even worked out magical ways to play pranks on the other boys. Oh, we were so reckless! I can’t believe it took me this long to get caught!”

Merlin was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was sober. “After all those years of hiding, it felt good to have a friend I could just be myself around. He never once looked at me differently because I had magic. As we got older, he always looked out for me, helping me to protect my secret. And he’s still doing it— helping me hide here, and bringing me food.”

Arthur smiled wistfully. He had often wished he had a friend like that. “You said you healed his son’s broken leg. It sounds like you both look out for each other.”

“Yeah, I guess we do.”

They didn’t speak for a while, each lost in their own thoughts. Arthur was imagining the ways two young boys might use magic to trick their friends when he suddenly realised: he was no longer questioning the fact that Merlin actually had magic. Listening to Merlin’s stories had taken away the last of his doubt. Apparently, Arthur was now willing to admit that he lived in a world not completely governed by the laws of science he had spent his life studying.

In spite of his rocky relationship with his father and his sister, Arthur had always been quick to trust people. Perhaps because he almost never lied himself, he leaned toward believing people, rather than questioning them. What he was experiencing with Merlin, however, was unlike anything he had ever felt.

The rational part of his brain still kept reminding him that this could all be a hoax. There could be a speaker installed in a fake stalactite, and ‘Merlin’ could be sitting in another part of the cave, speaking to Arthur through a microphone. But, although that was definitely the more likely scenario than talking to a sorcerer seven centuries in the past, Arthur believed with all his heart that Merlin was who he said he was.

Around 4:30, Gwen and Gwaine stopped in to pick him up on their way out of the cave, but this time, Arthur was prepared for their arrival. He knelt in front of his laptop, typing furiously and did his best to sound harried when they asked why he hadn’t packed up. He had to turn away at one point, because Merlin was laughing at his performance, and he almost cracked a smile. He told them he needed to stick around for another hour or so.

“That’s fine. Today was the last day Percy and I were in charge of this operation. I’m signing off that the portions of the cave you’re working in are safe, so Pendragon Energy won’t be paying us anymore.”

“Oh, okay.” Arthur stood to shake Gwaine’s hand. “It was nice meeting you. Thanks for bringing us safely this far.”

Gwaine gripped his hand with a grin. “You’re not getting rid of us yet. Perce and I crawled through one of the tunnels and discovered another series of tunnels and passages that we didn’t have the right equipment to explore. So on Friday, we’re coming back with a few friends for some wild caving.”

“Sounds like fun!” Arthur was a little jealous— he generally enjoyed exploring caves, but this time, both his work and hanging out with Merlin would keep him from joining the caving expedition.

After Gwaine squeezed out of the cavern, Gwen hung back. “Are you sure you’re okay, Arthur? You seemed frustrated when we came in.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine.”

Gwen raised her eyebrows and tilted her head as if she didn’t quite believe him.

“It took me a while to get things going, but it shouldn’t take too much longer now.”

Arthur hated lying to her. He felt sick to his stomach doing it, and he suspected that uneasy feeling was what Gwen was picking up on. She finally seemed to accept his words, though, and she nodded goodbye before heading out herself.

As Arthur watched her leave, Merlin murmured, “I’m sorry you’re having to lie to your friends. You don’t like lying, do you?”

“How could you tell?”

“Your voice sounds different when you lie.”

Arthur felt a thrill hearing that Merlin was already able to judge slight differences in his voice. Why did that please him so much?

That evening, they continued talking about everything from what they were eating for dinner— Merlin had some cured meat and a piece of bread, and Arthur had a packet of broken crisps he found in the bottom of his rucksack— to the differences in their lives from the 14th century to the 21st. And, so his excuses to Gwen and Gwaine wouldn’t be total lies, Arthur went ahead and ran a second ERT survey as well as driving in receivers for a reflective seismic survey.

He and Merlin talked and laughed until after midnight. Arthur could not remember enjoying conversation with anyone so much in his life. When they started getting tired, they each settled on the floor of the cave to sleep. From the sound of Merlin’s voice and his breathing, they were lying side by side, and when Arthur closed his eyes, he imagined he could feel Merlin’s warmth along his arm.

“Hey Arthur?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for staying with me. It’s been kind of lonely these last few weeks. I’m glad I don’t have to be alone tonight.” Merlin spoke barely above a whisper. He sounded so vulnerable in that moment that without thinking, Arthur reached over to touch him, but of course there was nothing there but empty air. So instead Arthur had to settle for touching Merlin with only his words.

“I’m glad to be here,” Arthur said gently. He only hesitated a moment before plunging ahead with his own vulnerable admission. “Being here with you today has been probably the best day of my life.”

“Me too. You know, except for the fact that half my village wants me killed.”

Arthur didn’t quite know how to respond to that, but fortunately, Merlin gave a breathy laugh and then said, “Good night, Arthur. I look forward to talking with you again tomorrow.”

“So do I. Good night, Merlin.”

It should have taken Arthur a long time to go to sleep, considering he was lying on a floor of hard limestone with no blanket or pillow, but the sound of Merlin breathing in the quiet of the cave filled him with a sense of peace and belonging he hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever. The comforting sounds of his new friend sleeping beside him quickly lulled him into slumber.

  
  


******

Arthur awoke, blinking against the darkness. Although, it wasn’t totally dark. What was that flickering orange light? His chest clenched and he bolted upright. Fire!

His hands pressed against the cold, stone floor, and he remembered he had spent the night in the cave with Merlin. A clammy feeling swept across his skin, and his heart slowed as he realised the fire was coming from a lantern on the opposite side of the cave.

As he calmed down and his eyes were better able to focus, he saw him: sitting a few feet from the lantern was a thin, dark haired man. Arthur let out a gasp, and the man looked up at the sound.

“Arthur? Are you awake?”

Merlin’s face lit up with a smile, and Arthur forgot to breathe. He was the most beautiful man Arthur had ever seen. Even in the dim light of the cave, Merlin’s eyes twinkled with his smile. He hadn’t exaggerated about his hair being curly when it was long. Thick locks looped over his ears and almost to his eyebrows.

Raising up onto his knees, Arthur reached a hesitant hand toward Merlin. “I can see you.”

“You can?” Merlin did not make any move toward Arthur’s outstretched hand. “I can’t see you.”

Arthur lowered his hand, realising that Merlin wasn’t actually looking at him. His eyes were sort of focused on the wall behind Arthur. His heart sank in disappointment. If he could see Merlin, why couldn’t Merlin see him? Why should the window in time suddenly be open to him? Was it becoming more than just a window?

“Let me try something.” Arthur stood and walked to where Merlin sat. He knelt directly in front of Merlin and sat back onto his feet so they were face to face. It felt strange— actually seeing Merlin, this man from the past he had come to care for deeply. He looked into Merlin’s eyes and felt a little shaky, suddenly hyper aware of every beat of his heart. He stared in silence for a moment, and then, without thinking, Arthur breathed, “You’re so gorgeous.”

Merlin looked down and away, and Arthur almost apologized, until he noticed that Merlin was biting back a smile.

“Is that so?” Merlin raised twinkling eyes in Arthur’s direction, obviously pleased at the compliment.

”Definitely.” Arthur grinned back, unable to think of anything clever to say, so he stared rather stupidly, until the corners of Merlin’s lips started to drop.

“I wish I could see you, too,” he murmured, wistfully.

Merlin’s wish reminded Arthur that he had wanted to test their new situation. “Can I try a little experiment? I want to see if I can touch you.” Merlin raised his eyebrows and pulled back slightly, so Arthur clarified, “If you don’t mind, of course. Would you hold out your hand?”

Merlin raised his hand slowly, but instead of holding it out, he clenched it into a fist against his chest. Was he afraid? Arthur supposed he might be frightened if the tables were turned. Feeling the touch of someone he couldn’t see might be a bit disconcerting. He was about to say they didn’t have to try this when Merlin released his fist and held his hand out, palm up.

Arthur smiled at this small gesture of trust, and he decided to narrate his own movements, so Merlin wouldn’t be at such a disadvantage, and he would know when to expect a touch.

“Okay, I’m lifting up my right hand, and I’m going to place it down on top of yours. Ready? Here it comes in three, two, one.”

They both looked down at their hands. Arthur lowered his to make contact just after he said “one,” but instead of touching Merlin’s hand, his fingers simply moved right through Merlin’s as if he were some sort of hologram.

Shoulders sinking, Arthur let his hand fall to his side with a sigh.

“I didn’t feel anything,” Merlin said flatly. “Did you?”

“No.”

Merlin nodded and gave a slight shrug. “I didn’t think we would. I don’t fully understand this connection between us. It makes no sense for us to be able to talk in the first place, and it is certainly baffling— not to mention frustrating—” he waved one hand and rolled his eyes, “that you can now see me, but I can’t see you. But if we  _ were  _ able to make contact, which time period would our hands be in?”

Arthur was confused. “What do you mean?”

Reaching his right hand out again, Merlin glanced up and, this time, nearly met Arthur’s eyes. “Right now, my hand is in 1336 and yours is in 2019. But if we were able to touch,” he placed his left hand atop the right one and held them both up, “we would be physically reaching across time. So would I still be sitting in my time and you in yours and the only connection would be the point of contact? Or would one of us join the other in his time? Or would our hands, for as long as they were touching, exist in a place outside of time?”

Head spinning, Arthur furrowed his brow. “Nope. You lost me.”

“ _ I _ lost  _ you? _ ” Merlin laughed. “You, the scientist, who uses magnetic fields to see inside of solid rocks?”

If it were anyone else mocking him, Arthur might feel offended, but he just laughed along with Merlin. “Exactly! I’m a scientist! You start talking about existing outside of time, and you’ve left science far behind.”

“Well, I’m afraid we’ve long surpassed any type of magic I know about as well.”

“So maybe instead of trying to look for explanations, we should just accept what is happening, and try to enjoy it while it lasts?” Arthur suggested.

Merlin nodded, but still looked somewhat dissatisfied. “I guess.” His lower lip jutted out in an adorable pout, and Arthur thought his heart might stop. “I just wish I could see you as well. It’s strange being seen by someone you can’t see. How will I know whether you’re watching me or not?”

His question reminded Arthur of conspiracy theorists who thought the government put recording devices in household appliances to watch their every move, and he almost laughed, but then he realised, he had grown up with security cameras in every public place, and he still felt self-conscious occasionally, wondering who might be watching and judging as he walked up and down the aisles of the grocery store. The feeling of intrusion and violation would, naturally, be compounded for Merlin, who had not experienced regularly being watched by an unseen viewer.

“You’re right. I would not like that, either,” Arthur said, trying to decide how he could respect Merlin’s privacy. “What if we assume that whenever we’re talking, I’m looking at you, and if I’m working or whatever, I’ll tell you if I look your way. And if you need some privacy, just tell me, and I promise I’ll avert my eyes?”

Merlin looked a little skeptical, but he nodded. “That sounds good.”

“And speaking of privacy,” Arthur gave a half chuckle, “Uh, how have you been taking care of, uh, relieving yourself while you’ve been living in the cave?”

“Ah, yes.” Merlin looked toward the ground. “Well, I go outside for that.”

Arthur nodded. “But if I go outside the cave, we’ll lose time. Who knows how many days you’ll be waiting for me to take a simple piss?”

“I’ll go, too,” Merlin said as if it were an obvious solution. “We’ll walk out together.”

“Do you think that will work?”

“It’s worth a try.” Merlin stood up, huffing a laugh. “Besides, if I don’t go out soon, I’m going to need Will to bring me some fresh trousers.”

Arthur started toward the small passage out of the chamber, but Merlin moved the opposite direction. As Merlin started to walk toward the section of the cavern where rocks had fallen, Arthur noticed that portion kept going in and out of focus for him. His eyes were having a hard time distinguishing what was rock and what wasn’t. As he tried to focus on each individual rock in the pile, he could. One at a time, the rocks were there, but as he focused on one, it seemed to be surrounded by emptiness, until he focused his eyes on the rock beside it, and then it was solidly there, but the first one was gone. He was seeing both the empty passage from the past and the filled in one from the present at the same moment, and his brain didn’t quite know what to do with that information.

“I can’t go that way, Merlin.”

“Why not?”

“It’s filled in now,” Arthur explained. “At some point in my past, there must have been an earthquake or something that broke apart the walls and ceiling enough to fill in that passage.”

Merlin looked around the cavern, confused. “Then how did you get in here?”

“Through the thin crevice over here.”

Walking that direction, Merlin peered into the crevice. “The one that leads to the giant cavern with all the water? But there’s no way outside from there. The only passages lead to smaller and smaller tunnels.”

“Oh.”

Arthur’s eyes cut back and forth between his own entrance to the chamber and Merlin’s. The passage he and the others had followed to reach that large chamber had only opened up during the earthquake a few weeks ago. Why had Arthur not made this connection before? Of course Merlin had an alternate way to get into the cavern.

“There was an earthquake recently— well, recently for me— that opened a new passage. In my time, we would enter the cave on the south side, and, until that quake, we had no idea there was so much to this cavern. Before, there were only a few small chambers exposed.”

“If we each go out different ways, will we lose this connection, do you think?” Merlin asked.

“I hope not.” Arthur cast his gaze back and forth between the two exits. “I’m not sure we have a choice, though.” He gave a slight laugh to cover up the fact that his stomach was now a pit of dread.

“I guess you’re right.” Merlin took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then said, “Best get on with it, then.” He took a couple of steps toward his exit, but then turned back. He opened his mouth, but seemed to rethink and snapped it shut again.

Arthur understood. It was possible they might never speak again, in which case, he’d like to tell Merlin how much this last day had meant to him, and that he was glad they had met. However, simply saying those things would feel like a goodbye. Like they were jinxing themselves.

So he followed Merlin’s lead and turned to leave their cavern as well. He didn’t want to be away for too long, so he hurried through the cave. Not a good idea in the cramped space, however. He bumped his head into stalactites twice and kept stumbling over loose rocks, but he managed to make it outside without any severe damage. The sun was already high in the sky. He glanced at his watch and found it was after 9:00. Merlin was right— it was easy to lose track of time in the darkness of the cave.

He hiked a short distance into the woods, and, once he had answered nature’s call and started back toward the cave, he noticed his stomach was grumbling. He was supposed to see if Gwen could bring him something to eat. Well, he was already bruised from rushing outside, so it wouldn’t hurt much more to text and walk at the same time. Assuming his phone still had any power, that is. He dug it out of his pocket. Five percent— whew. He texted Gwen, explaining that he had worked into the night and decided simply to sleep there rather than driving home so late.

_ What have you found? You wouldn’t put this much effort into a project for Morgana _

She was right. He wouldn’t dedicate such long hours into research for his sister. And he couldn’t even lie and say he’d found anything interesting for his own research; he wouldn’t be publishing anything based on what he’d seen so far. So he had to create a different lie.

_ There were some anomalies in the data so I wanted to repeat the tests _

_ I see. _

Arthur recognised Gwen’s use of punctuation in that short text as an indication that she didn’t believe him, but she was typing more, so he didn’t feel the need to respond.

_ I have class in 20 minutes _ — _ can’t bring you food until this afternoon. You should take a break and get some yourself also don’t you have classes to teach? _

_ My TA is covering my classes this week _

At least that wasn’t a lie. He hadn’t been sure how long this project might take, so he’d arranged for Mordred to teach all week. He needed the experience anyway.

_ Could you just bring me a burger or something when you come out here later? I’ll pay you back _

_ I still think you need a break, but okay _

Arthur thanked her and shoved his phone into his pocket just as he entered the large chamber with the flowstone. Panic started to set in as he approached his and Merlin’s little cavern. What if Merlin wasn’t there? What if he never got to talk to him again? Logically, he knew it was absurd to be this attached to someone he only really met yesterday, but his feelings said otherwise. And it wasn’t just the novelty of meeting someone from the Middle Ages who had magic; Arthur genuinely cared about Merlin as a friend, and Arthur had to admit to himself, if a relationship beyond friendship were at all possible, he would definitely pursue it.

Nerves tingling, he slid into their small cave. It was completely dark, so he shone his torch around into every nook and cranny. No Merlin. His shoulders dropped.

But maybe he simply couldn’t see him anymore.

“Merlin?” he called aloud.

When there was no response, Arthur reminded himself that Merlin was probably still outside, and he would return shortly, so he started setting up his equipment to run a seismic survey.

Morgana wouldn’t be happy with the results he’d found so far; there was no evidence of oil reservoirs. Arthur should actually move to another part of the cave to run more tests, and maybe after Merlin returned, he would. Then they could see if their connection was only in this chamber, or if they could move around the rest of the cavern together.

The entire time he was setting up, Arthur kept looking toward the pile of rocks where the exit used to be. Ten minutes passed and there was still no sign of Merlin. Trying not to panic yet, Arthur went ahead and ran three iterations of his survey. Another 20 minutes passed, and Arthur’s chest started feeling tight. Had something happened to Merlin? Had their connection broken? Or was he experiencing the same disjointed time that Merlin had yesterday, when Arthur went outside for lunch and Merlin was alone for three days?

It had been less than an hour, and Arthur was already antsy. How horrible those days must have been for Merlin.

A sinking feeling of dread at the thought of being without Merlin threatened to pull Arthur into a pit of hopelessness, but then he remembered that even though Merlin had been in hiding, alone for weeks, he maintained a positive outlook. Surely Arthur could muster some of that same courage.

So he returned to his work, and he even took his equipment to other sections of the cave, although he took frequent breaks to return to their little cavern, hoping to find that Merlin had returned. He worked for several hours, and by the afternoon, he found his hunger and thirst were becoming a distraction. When would Gwen arrive? He was tempted to drink some of the water in the cave. That was how Merlin got his water, after all, but Arthur also knew that years of human pollution made the water unsafe to drink. As he walked through various sections of the cave, though, the sounds of water dripping into the glistening pools around him kept pulling his focus away from his analyses to his dry mouth and parched throat.

His mobile had died shortly after ten that morning, and his Fitbit was now flashing the low battery sign every time he checked the time, so he would soon be completely at the mercy of his internal body clock, which, according to Merlin, would start to be less reliable after a few days in the darkness of the cave. How long could he wait down here, hoping his new friend from the Middle Ages would return?

As he returned to his equipment from his seventh trip back to the small cavern to see if Merlin had returned, he heard voices coming from the passages by the entrance. Relieved, he turned around to meet Gwen and her team in the large chamber. He hoped she had brought more than just one bottle of water for him.

The voices got louder as they made their way closer. He definitely heard Gwen, but he could only distinguish one other voice, and it didn’t sound like Mithian or Elena. Who was that?

Then the Not Gwen person laughed, and Arthur’s heart dropped. He knew that laugh. It was his sister. Why had Gwen brought her?

Gwen appeared first, squeezing through the crevice in the limestone wall. She gave Arthur a small smile, and then Morgana edged into the chamber. Arthur had several lanterns set up, so the cave formations were more visible than they had been a couple of days ago when Arthur and the others had first discovered this rather impressive space.

Morgana didn’t even greet Arthur at first. Open mouthed, she took a few careful steps and surveyed the cavern. Breathing an awed, “Wow,” she turned in a slow circle to take it all in. After a few quiet moments, she looked over at Arthur and said, “Okay, I can kind of see why you’d prefer to stay in here rather than going back to reality.”

Arthur started to deny that he was hiding from the real world, but Morgana shut him down with a stern look. She turned to Gwen. “You go ahead and do your work, Gwen.” She lifted the largish bag she was carrying. “My brother and I are going to sit down for lunch and a little chat.”

As Gwen walked around behind the flowstone, presumably to the area of the cave where she had found the most fossil evidence, Morgana gave another glance around the cavern, and said to Arthur, “All these formations are still alive and growing, and I don’t want to take a chance on killing them with our greasy hamburger fingers. Is there another spot we could eat without messing anything up?”

So Arthur picked up one of the lanterns and led her to his and Merlin’s little cavern, where she immediately began setting up a picnic of sorts and motioned for him to sit.

He didn’t hesitate. He plopped onto the cave floor and grabbed the two litre bottle she’d brought and started chugging water. It was ice cold and felt so good sliding down his throat, he forgot himself for a moment. When he pulled it away and swiped the back of his hand across his lips, he saw Morgana staring at him.

“So, why won’t you leave the cave, Arthur?”

He snatched a burger from the little cloth she had spread on the floor, unwrapped it and shoved it into his mouth, taking a large bite. He chewed a bit and then, talking around the food, partly because he knew how much that annoyed his sister, he said, “I’m just trying to get you the survey data you wanted.”

Morgana shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. That lie didn’t even fool Gwen, and she doesn’t know you half as well as I do.” She narrowed her eyes, almost like she was trying to peer inside his head. “Is there something going on at work or at home that you’re trying to avoid?”

Arthur took another large bite to give himself a moment to think, although it was difficult with her staring at him like that. She didn’t seem like she was trying to pry to get information to use against him. She did seem genuinely concerned. Weirdly, he did want to talk about Merlin. He wanted someone else to know about the time rift in this cave and the friend he had made because of it. But could he trust Morgana?

He chewed slowly, until the bite of burger was completely pulverized, to give himself more time to decide how to respond. To her credit, Morgana waited patiently and did not try to rush him.

Finally, he made his decision. He decided to tell her the truth. If she thought he was crazy, well… that wouldn’t be much different than how she had treated him throughout their childhood. So he swallowed, took a deep breath and plunged ahead with his bizarre story.

“I found something in the cave,” he said. “Well, rather, I found someone.”

Arthur told his sister about all the events of the last few days. He told her about seeing the flickering flame and hearing Merlin’s voice that first day. He told her about meeting Merlin and discovering he lived 700 years ago. He told her about how they had bonded, sharing stories of their vastly different lives. And he told her about Merlin’s magic and how he had to hide for fear of his life.

Surprisingly, Morgana listened to his entire story and didn’t interrupt him once.

“And every time I left the cave, some crazy time shift happened, and Merlin was left alone for days, even when I only left for half an hour.” Arthur bit his lip. “So that’s why I couldn’t leave the cave. I didn’t want him to be alone.”

Morgana had listened passively, with no emotions or reactions showing on her face, but at this, her expression softened. “You really like him, don’t you?”

“I…” Arthur ducked his head, suddenly embarrassed. The uncharacteristic tenderness in her voice was making him uncomfortable. Apparently, it was easier for him to admit to his sister that he had been talking to a medieval sorcerer through a time rift than to admit he was developing feelings for that man.

“Is he hot?”

He glanced up to find Morgana smirking at him and waggling her eyebrows suggestively. Now, this was more familiar territory. “Don’t be gross, Morgana.” He took another bite of his burger and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “But yeah, he’s hot. Nice arms.”

She laughed and they shared a grin. Then she sobered and stared at him again for several long moments. He looked down, uncomfortable under her gaze. She was probably about to tell him he had imagined the whole thing and offer to take him to the doctor. He never could have predicted her next words.

“Arthur,” her voice was barely more than a whisper. “I never told you this before, because I was afraid, and because we’re not supposed to tell anyone, but...” She reached over and grabbed his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I have magic, too.”

Arthur’s head shot up. He felt like someone had just stabbed him in the chest.

“I’m a sorceress, just like Merlin.”

He didn’t respond at first. He had no idea how to react, but then he realised she was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to give her some sort of validation.

“Wow,” was all he could manage.

“Wow!” Morgana smacked him on the shoulder. “That’s all you have to say? Wow?” She smacked him again. “I finally share this huge part of me with you that’s kept me terrified most of my life, and you say, wow.”

“Hey!” Arthur jerked his shoulder away. “Stop it, Morgana. I was just surprised. That’s all.” He rubbed his upper arm where her blows had landed. “I just learned that magic is real yesterday, and it was from Merlin’s world, you know? Like a medieval kind of thing. It didn’t even occur to me that there might still be magic in the modern world, much less that my own sister might have been hiding magic from me my entire life.”

She glared at him. “I told you I was scared. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, ha ha, I’ll keep this secret from Arthur so I’ll have something to lord over him when we’re in our thirties.”

Arthur reached out and placed a gentle hand on her forearm. “I know that. Okay? I’m sorry I didn’t react better.” She finally gave a little shrug, which he remembered from childhood was her way of accepting an apology. “I can only imagine how hard it must have been keeping your magic a secret all these years. I mean, Merlin’s been living in a cave for months, because his magic was discovered. I don’t even know what would happen if someone discovered your magic.”

His mind presented him with an image of the government coming to cart Morgana off to a facility for testing like in the movies, and he suddenly remembered something. “Wait, you said ‘we’re not supposed to tell anyone.’ So are there others? Like you? With magic?”

“A few,” Morgana answered quietly, avoiding his eyes.

“A few, like there’s ten of you in the whole world? Or a few, like there’s a whole underground society with, like, schools and shops, and if I happened to lean against the wrong pillar at King’s Cross, I’d find myself boarding the Hogwarts Express?”

She laughed, finally looking up at him with a half-shrug. “Somewhere in between those two.”

“So, do you know anyone else with magic?”

Pursing her lips, Morgana stared at him thoughtfully. “I do, but I can’t tell you who they are or even how I know them. Their stories aren’t mine to tell.”

“Of course.”

Arthur gave her an understanding smile, indicating he would not press the issue any further. And he did understand. When he was fifteen, he had confided his confusion about being attracted to both girls and boys to a friend, and without realising she was outing him, she had shared his story with two or three other friends until rumours started flying around the whole school and kids started teasing him and calling him rude names. He’d decided to counter the rumours by dating Vivian, the most popular girl in the school, for the rest of the term. They mostly went on group dates where Vivian could chat with her friends, and Arthur could talk sport with the other guys, but the perception that he was in a committed relationship with a beautiful girl did its job in quelling the rumours.

Morgana returned his smile and then looked around the cavern. “You can’t just wait here indefinitely, hoping Merlin will return.”

Shoulders dropping, Arthur let out a sigh. “I know. But I don’t want to have disappeared if he does come back and it was just a weird time shift like before.”

“I’ll stay here with you the rest of the day, Arthur, but I do think you should go home and get some proper sleep tonight.” She scrunched up her nose. “And take a shower. You’re a little ripe.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. Brutal honesty was Morgana’s specialty. Although, a shower actually did sound good after being cooped up in the cave for more than 24 hours. His gaze drifted toward the cave-in where he had last seen Merlin before they each went outside. At first, he only saw the pile of rocks, but if he allowed his focus to drift slightly to the side, the cave-in blurred, and he could almost see the passage Merlin had exited through.

Arthur stood and walked closer, blinking hard as his eyes struggled to focus on the changing image before him. He reached out to touch the rocks, and of course, they were solid, although his vision tried to tell him otherwise.

“The connection’s still here,” he said, turning back toward Morgana. As he did, his eyes lit on the wall behind the spot where he had just been sitting. For a moment, he thought he saw writing carved into the wall, but when he looked again, it disappeared.

He pulled a small torch from his pocket and shone it on the cave wall. It was mostly smooth, except a small portion that looked as if it had been chiseled away, but when he looked away again, out of the corner of his eye, he could see words carved into the cave wall. He took a step closer, trying to read the words.

“What is it?” Morgana stood, joining him, staring at the wall.

“There are words carved into this wall.”

After a moment of silence, Morgana said, “Uh… no, there aren’t.”

“In the past,” Arthur clarified. “There was a message written here in the past. I can see it, but only if I don’t look directly at it.” He tilted his head left and right, and up and down, but he could only ever see that words were there, not read them.

“Dammit,” he muttered, squinting until his eyes were almost closed.

“Move closer.” Morgana grabbed him by the shoulders, shoving him forward. “If you’re close enough, you can focus just an inch or so above each word, and then maybe you’ll be able to make them out.”

Arthur placed his face mere inches from the cave wall, and gasped. “It’s working!” He read the words aloud as he slid his eyes just above the message.

“M caught. Trial tomorrow. He says goodbye and thank you.”

The moment the words registered in Arthur’s mind, he started shaking. “He’s been captured.” He whirled around to face his sister. “What do we do? We have to help him!”

Morgana’s head tilted to one side in sympathy. “Arthur. All of this happened 700 years ago. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Isn’t there some sort of time-travelling spell?”

“Uh, no.” Morgana shook her head adamantly. “Can you even imagine the chaos if people were able to travel in time? I’m pretty sure every fictional story with time travel warned heavily against it.”

Rubbing his hands on his jeans to keep them from shaking, Arthur pleaded desperately, “Surely not all of them. There has to be a way to save him, Morgana. He told me they burn sorcerers. I can’t let him burn.”

Morgana reached out to take both his hands in hers, squeezing gently. “Whatever happened has already happened, though.” When Arthur screwed his eyes shut at that thought, she continued in a soft voice, “We don’t know for sure. Maybe he escaped, or maybe he was banished. But no matter what his fate was, it’s part of the past. There’s nothing you can do to change that.”

Arthur ripped his hands from hers and started pacing around the small cavern.

“No, I refuse to accept that. If magic and time windows exist then there must be a way for me to reach back into the past to help him.” He stopped pacing and stared at the floor, brow furrowed as he mumbled his thoughts out loud, “Our connection was growing stronger. At first I could only hear him, but this morning, I could see him, and I could vaguely see his version of the cave around him. And I can still see his cave.”

He whipped around to face Morgana again. “If I stay here long enough— here, in this cavern where we connected and where we developed and grew that mental and emotional connection— do you think I might be able to make a physical connection as well?”

Sighing wearily, Morgana said, “I don’t think it works that way. He’s not even here anymore. How can you grow a connection with someone when you’re not even able to interact with them?”

Arthur glared at her and snapped, “Maybe if you actually had a heart, you’d understand.”

“Okay.” Morgana threw up her hands and then knelt to gather her picnic supplies. “I’m done. You’re on your own.”

“No! You can’t just…” Arthur closed his eyes and took two deep breaths. He knew he’d been unfairly harsh just then. “I’m sorry. I’m tired and I’m scared and I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

Morgana stopped what she was doing and looked up at him, narrowing her eyes. “Remember when we were little, and we’d fight, and Dad would make us apologise to each other, so we would, but we both knew we didn’t mean it. And Dad knew we didn’t mean it. But we said the words, because that’s what we were supposed to do?”

Arthur snorted. “Yeah?”

She stood and clapped him on the shoulder. “Your fake apology skills have not improved a bit in twenty years.”

“Sorry,” Arthur said with a smirk. “I’ll have to work on that.”

Morgana rolled her eyes with a vaguely annoyed smile, but before she turned away, Arthur caught her elbow. “No, really, Morgana. I shouldn’t have been rude like that. But I really am scared for Merlin, and I do need your help.”

She pursed her lips with another heavy sigh. “Fine. There is someone who may be able to help. There’s this weird old sorcerer who runs a sort of library of magical resources out of his house. I’ve only met him once before. Mor— A friend took me to see him when I kept having these horrible nightmares. He was able to help me control and interpret them.”

Arthur smiled, choosing to ignore her little slip, where she almost outed her friend Morgause as a sorcerer. He’d never cared much for Morgause; she always seemed snobbish and aloof. But he now realised her cool demeanor may have been a defense since she always had to hide her magic. And if she’d helped Morgana with her magic, maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.

“That sounds good. Can you ask him if he can help?”

“No, Arthur.” Morgana shook her head. “ _ You’re _ going to ask him. I’m going to take you home so you can clean up and get some real food, and then we’ll drive out to Oakleigh to see Gaius.”

“Oakleigh?” Arthur protested. “That’s more than an hour away.” He looked toward the caved-in exit where he had last seen Merlin.

“I really don’t think staying here will accomplish anything, Arthur. Come with me.” Morgana started gathering their picnic leftovers and motioned for Arthur to gather his survey equipment. “Gaius knows loads about magical history and spells. If anyone can help Merlin, it’ll be him.”

Reluctantly, Arthur collected all of his equipment into his bins, they let Gwen know they were leaving, and took their supplies out to leave them in Arthur’s car. Then Morgana drove him home for a quick shower, and within a couple of hours, they were on the road to visit Gaius. Arthur slumped in the passenger seat, leaning his head against the window. He thought about Merlin facing the village elders, knowing the punishment for using magic was death, and he closed his eyes against tears of fear for his new friend. Arthur hoped this sorcerer would be able to help.

******

“Hey.” Arthur felt someone shaking his shoulder. “Wake up. We’re here.”

He turned toward the voice of his sister and blinked heavily against the sunlight pouring in from all sides. Right. Morgana had brought him to see the sorcerer who might be able to save Merlin.

He quickly opened the car door and, stepping outside, looked up at the sorcerer’s house. “What the hell, Morgana? I thought you sorcerers were supposed to keep all this magic stuff secret.”

Gaius’s home looked very much like a wizard had moved to Devon centuries ago and tried, but never quite worked out how to fit in. At first glance, Arthur thought the cottage had a thatched roof, but upon further inspection, he could see that it was more like moss and dirt. One section was alive with herbs that hung over the edge of the roof and wound their way into an open window. Though the house was tiny, Arthur counted no fewer than eight chimneys, three of which were spewing purple smoke.

Thick ivy poured over the low stone wall that surrounded the cottage. Morgana opened the gate, and they entered the garden that was so full of plants, Arthur could barely see the path to the front door, and he was certain if he spent any time here, the overpowering sweet, floral scent would give him a headache. As they picked their way along the broken, overgrown pathway, Arthur could make out eerily realistic statues of animals perched throughout the garden.

Morgana stepped onto the front porch to ring the bell, but Arthur could not join her. The steps leading to the door were piled high with a variety of glass jars and clay pots that overflowed with pungent liquids and unidentifiable bits of plant debris. On the top step, Arthur even spotted a broken tea kettle, where a family of mice seemed to have made their home.

“Come in! Come in!” A voice called from within the house. “You can help me get these pots under control!”

Morgana and Arthur exchanged confused shrugs and she opened the door. Before they could even step over the threshold, they were enveloped in a dense, purple mist. Arthur coughed. He suddenly longed for the sweet scent of the garden. He and Morgana gasped and choked, eyes watering, as they made their way through the house to the kitchen, where the acrid fog seemed the thickest.

A man with long white hair, wearing a floor-length maroon robe, of all things, was shuffling frantically between three massive fireplaces. If he’d been able to breathe properly, Arthur might have laughed, because in each fireplace was an actual cauldron, bubbling a thick, syrupy, purple mess into the fire below. Without looking up from the cauldron he was stirring, Gaius shouted, “How many of you are there?”

“Um, two?” Morgana answered.

“Perfect!” Gaius flung out his empty hand and two long-handled wooden spoons flew up from the table. Arthur and Morgana flung up their own hands just in time to catch the spoons before they smacked them in the face. “Stir,” Gaius commanded.

Exchanging another bewildered glance with his sister, Arthur strode quickly to one of the pots and dipped his spoon in.

“Clockwise only!” Gaius shouted, and Arthur started stirring the purple liquid in a clockwise direction. He glanced over his shoulder to note whether Gaius was stirring briskly or with a deeper, churning motion. He couldn’t see around Gaius to his pot, but his body was shaking with his movements, so Arthur decided to go with rapid stirring.

Soon, the bubbling decreased, and no more of the syrupy liquid escaped the pot. The haze in the room began to clear, and Arthur could breathe easy once again.

“Thank you,” Gaius said. “I don’t know how I managed to let this get so out of hand. If you can reach the lid hanging on the bricks beside each of you, please slide that over your pot and we can retire to the living room, where I hope the putrid smell of burning botaniplasm potion hasn’t saturated all the furniture.”

Arthur soon found himself nestled down in a musty armchair, holding a steaming mug of tea that he had no intention of drinking after what he had just seen in the kitchen, listening to Gaius and Morgana discussing the potential soothsaying qualities of her dreams. He felt dizzy, and he wasn’t sure whether the spinning in his head was caused by the remaining humid odour in the air, the heat from the three cauldrons in the kitchen, or the fact that two days ago, he was just a regular old geophysics professor, teaching classes and grading papers in front of the telly, and now he had been swept into a fantastical world of potions, magic and time-travel.

“Arthur?”

Uh oh. He must have zoned out, because Morgana was using her annoyed voice.

“Gaius asked you a question.”

“I’m sorry. What was the question?” he asked Gaius, ignoring Morgana’s exasperated sigh.

“What exactly were you doing when you first heard Merlin’s voice in the cave?”

Arthur tried to sit more upright, but his chair sagged so much that his rear end was nearly touching the floor, and all he accomplished was splashing tea into his lap and prompting an embarrassed eye-roll from his sister.

“Uh,” he said, swiping the back of his hand across his damp trousers, “I was just standing in the cave with Gwen and her team, waiting for the cavers to come back and tell us what to do.”

“Were you, or any of your companions, burning rosemary?”

An amused scoff escaped that Arthur managed to turn into a cough after a harsh look from Morgana. “No, sorry. None of us were burning rosemary.”

Gaius nodded thoughtfully. “And when you heard Merlin’s voice, was he incanting a spell?”

“No. He was just talking to his friend, Will.”

“Curious.” Gaius stood and walked over to his bookshelf. Running one finger over the spines of the books, he continued, “In all of my research, I have only ever come across one spell that is supposed to allow one to travel across time. Many sorcerers have tried to make it work, but none have been successful. Here!”

He pulled a book from the shelf and opened it to a bookmarked page before passing it over to Arthur. The page showed a photograph of a scroll on which was written a series of steps, ending with an incantation in a language Arthur didn’t recognise. The description explained that the scroll was passed through generations of Druids before being hidden in a basement when the Druids started to disband. It had been rediscovered in the early 19th century and now resided in a secret museum of magical artifacts in Scotland.

“As you can see,” Gaius explained, tapping on the photograph of the scroll, “the procedure calls for the hopeful time-traveller to create a potion with sixteen drops of leech juice, three cups of rosewater, eight teaspoons of armadillo bile, and one teaspoon of powdered lizard tongue.”

Gaius read these ingredients as if there was nothing odd about them, but Arthur wrinkled his nose at Morgana, appalled especially by the armadillo bile. She simply gave a baffled shrug. Perhaps her magical studies had been limited to simple spells and dream interpretation, rather than potion making, or perhaps those really were unusual potion ingredients.

“The sorcerer should boil the potion over a flame created from burning rosemary branches until the colour changes from yellow to deep blue. Then, incanting the spell, he should pour the completed potion in a circle before him and then step into the circle.”

Returning to his seat on the sofa beside Morgana, Gaius explained. “Most likely, that scroll was written as a theoretical guess at a time-travelling spell. Many powerful sorcerers have brewed this potion and invoked this spell, but all have failed in their attempt to travel in time.”

He stared thoughtfully at Arthur. “Although,” one of his eyebrows crept upward, “no one has ever managed to communicate across time before, either.”

Arthur shot upright, once again spilling his tea. “That’s it!” he exclaimed, “Merlin said we had a window in time between us. There’s something special about that cave.” He looked excitedly at Morgana. “If we make that potion and pour it in the cave, it might work. And then maybe we can go back in time and help Merlin.”

He turned, smiling, toward Gaius. “You wouldn’t happen to have any armadillo bile on hand, would you?”

******

Amazingly, Gaius had all the ingredients they needed. Additionally, he had the proper set-up for actually brewing the potion. Unfortunately, by the time they had completed two batches of the potion— one for a trip to the past and one for the return trip— it was after 10pm, and Gaius insisted that Arthur and Morgana stay the night.

When they returned to the cave Friday morning, Arthur was so anxious, he felt like he could take seismic readings simply by placing his own shaking hands on the wall of the cavern.

“Do you think it’ll work?” he asked Morgana. “Do you think we’ll actually be able to travel back to save him?”

Morgana rolled her head backward as she parked the car. “For the hundredth time, I have no idea. Let’s just get in that cave and get this over with.” She got out and slammed the door behind her. “I am so sick of listening to your whinging.”

Arthur closed his car door more carefully and then followed her toward the cave. “You’re cranky when you haven’t had coffee.”

His quip was met with a familiar glare he remembered from childhood, but this time, Morgana also raised one hand toward him. “Careful, Arthur. I know spells to create all sorts of blemishes. You wouldn’t want to show up to rescue Merlin with a big, hairy wart on the tip of your nose, now would you?”

Before Arthur could respond, Morgana shifted her attention to the car parked near the cave entrance. “That’s not Gwen’s car. Is someone else here?”

Then Arthur remembered that Gwaine had told him he would be returning with a group of cavers to explore the newly discovered sections of the cave. He told Morgana about Gwaine’s plan and said he hoped they were already well into their expedition. Arthur didn’t want the cavers to interrupt him and Morgana as they tried to cast the time-travel spell.

“If the potion does work, and you are able to go back in time, have you thought through what you’re going to do?”

Arthur turned on his torch as they entered the cave. Without turning around to look at Morgana, he simply shrugged. “I’ll go to the village and find Merlin.”

“Is the village where Lomswick is now? Or since Merlin comes in on the opposite side of the cave, is his village down the hill toward Dunton?”

He hadn’t thought about the exact location of Merlin’s village.

“How long will you have to walk? Should you have packed some food? You do have water, right?”

“Yeah, I have water. And I grabbed a few protein bars.” Arthur also hadn’t thought about being in the past on his own. He certainly didn’t know how to hunt for food.

“Won’t you stand out in your modern clothes? Are you going to let anyone see you, or will you try to stay hidden from everyone except Merlin and his friend?”

Again, Arthur had not even considered details like his clothes or whether he might run across anyone else in the past. He did realise Morgana’s questions were perfectly reasonable, but at the moment, it just felt like she didn’t trust him and didn’t think he should attempt to go rescue Merlin.

“What do you want from me, Morgana? Do you want me to go visit the theatre department and borrow a medieval costume? Do you want me to pack a bow and arrow and some matches in case I get hungry? Should I ask my mate Lance, the history professor, if I can look at some maps from the 1300s?” He shone the torch directly in Morgana’s face. “Meanwhile, Merlin could be burned at any moment. Should I take the time for deep research while he waits to die?”

She took two steps forward and reached up to lower his torch with a heavy sigh. “I know you’re worried about Merlin, and you feel like every moment that passes puts him more at risk.” She paused, pursing her lips. “But  _ I’m  _ worried about  _ you _ .”

Arthur nearly dropped the torch. Never in his life did he think he would hear his sister express concern for him.

“Even if the potion works, how do we know it will take you to the correct time? And there’s so many things that could go wrong. You might end up on that pyre right alongside Merlin.” She looked down and then up again to meet Arthur’s eyes. “I mean, I know we haven’t had the best relationship, but you’re still my little brother. I don’t want you to die 700 years ago.”

They shared a slight chuckle, and then, without hesitation, Arthur pulled her into a hug. As she wrapped her arms around his back, he tried to remember the last time they had hugged. He couldn’t. So he squeezed harder.

After several long seconds, she pulled away. “I know, I know. We’re wasting time.” She pushed him away and waved toward the rest of the cave. “Go on. Shift.”

Giving her a grateful smile, Arthur went to squeeze through the narrow entrance to the large cavern. “You are right, though. I generally prefer to be better prepared when I undertake a new task.” He pushed into the chamber and then turned to shine the torch for her to enter. “But I feel like, this time, no amount of research and preparation would be enough, so I might as well go and just play it by ear.”

“Play what by ear? Where are you going?” A voice from across the cave surprised Arthur and he whipped around to find Gwen, standing alongside Gwaine, both wearing lighted helmets and climbing harnesses, and carrying ropes.

Morgana gasped. “Gwen! You surprised me!”

“Sorry,” Gwen said. “We weren’t expecting you back this morning. Arthur, don’t you have classes to teach?”

She sounded vaguely annoyed, which was somewhat out of character for Gwen. Then Arthur realised she and Gwaine had been in the cavern alone.

“I thought you were bringing a group of caver friends to explore today?” Arthur shone his torch around. “Where’s everyone else?”

Gwaine ran his hand through his hair. “Well, Percy got sick, and I didn’t feel like leading the entire group on my own, so I canceled our wild caving adventure. I was just going to come out and do some mapping of the areas we found a few days ago, but then Gwen was here, and she offered to be my second for a bit of exploration, so…” He gave a shrug as if to convey that he was helpless to say no.

Morgana snorted behind him, but Arthur didn’t want to put any further thought into Gwen and Gwaine developing any sort of relationship.

“That’s fine. We won’t bother you.” Arthur gestured toward his small cavern. “Morgana’s just going to help me with some final surveying.”

As they turned away, Gwen shone her torch onto the potion bottle in Morgana’s hand. “Wait. That isn’t scientific equipment.”

Gwaine took a few steps forward. “There’s something shimmering inside that bottle. What is that?”

“Nothing,” Arthur said at the same time as Morgana said, “What’s it to you?”

“That’s magic,” Gwen breathed, scandalised. “That’s some sort of magic potion, isn’t it?”

Arthur and Morgana looked at one another in shock. How did Gwen know about magic?

Before they could respond, Gwaine said sternly, “Look, I’m no snitch, so I’m not going to report you, but you should know that stuff’s dangerous. You shouldn’t be messing around with that. I had a mate a few years ago who got involved with all that casting spells and brewing potions business. He was in so deep, he wouldn’t even listen when a group of us had an intervention to try to knock some sense into him.” Gwaine shook his head. “He ended up burning his whole house. Right down to ashes. They couldn’t even identify his remains— everything was torched so badly.”

Gwen listened to Gwaine’s story, nodding along sadly, but Arthur kept looking at Morgana, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Why were they both suddenly talking about magic as if they knew it was real, and not just something out of fantasy stories?

He was too baffled to speak, but Morgana, as usual, couldn’t seem to hold her tongue. “What the hell are you both talking about? How do you know about magic? And what do you mean, you won’t report us?”

“For using magic,” Gwen stated matter-of-factly, as if she talked about the use of magic in the real world every day.

“Who would you even report us to?” Morgana’s voice was rising. “It’s not like the Ministry of Magic is a real thing.”

“Ministry of…” Gwen shook her head, confused. “No, we’d report you to the police. Magic use of any kind is against the law.”

“Since when?” This time Morgana’s voice came out in a shriek, although Arthur could hardly blame her for losing control. He was as shocked as she was by Gwen’s claim.

It was Gwen and Gwaine’s turn to exchange confused glances. Gwaine spoke up. “Since about the Dark Ages. How is this news to you?”

Mind scrambling after some sort of explanation, Arthur wondered whether Gwen and Gwaine had bonded enough over this week to get together and plan this as a practical joke. But how could they know Morgana would be carrying a magic time-travelling potion into the cave?

Magical time-travelling. The realisation hit Arthur like a blow to the chest. That was it. His talking with Merlin and telling him about the future must have somehow changed the past. He looked at Morgana who was still staring at Gwaine, her eyes narrowed as if she were trying to decide whether he was making the whole thing up. Arthur leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Marty McFly.”

Eyes widening, she drew a long, slow breath through her mouth and nodded her understanding. She waved a hand toward Gwen and smiled. “Oh, sorry I forget you two aren’t in the industry and you don’t speak the lingo. Yes, obviously magic is illegal.” She gestured toward Gwaine. “And dangerous, as you say.” Then she raised the potion bottle and swirled it around. “This is an oil sample taken from a reservoir formed from fractures in a vein of metamorphic rock.”

Oh, she was quick on her feet. Arthur stared in awe at his sister as she spun her web of lies.

“Financially speaking, drilling into metamorphic rock is not cost-effective, so when we find one of these fractures where we can access such a reservoir, we in the industry call it  _ magic _ .” She wiggled her eyebrows conspiratorially. “Like all the forces of nature were working together to build our profits.”

Arthur almost spoiled her con by laughing at the thought of his father sitting in the board room with his cronies referring to an oil deposit as magic, because it would make them more money.

“Those shimmery bits you see in there are flecks of mica and quartz from the surrounding rock where we drilled.”

Now, there was no way Gwen and Gwaine would believe this, was there? Crude oil samples didn’t have bits of rock in them. And even if they did, the rock would sink to the bottom, not swirl around the flask shimmering and glowing.

But apparently neither Gwen nor Gwaine had ever seen an unprocessed oil sample before. They both nodded and smiled, looking relieved that Morgana and Arthur were not participating in the forbidden practise of magic.

“We’ll leave you to it, then,” Gwaine said, picking up his rope and adjusting his harness. “I hope you find some  _ magic  _ in this cave, too!”

Gwen shook her head, gathering her own supplies. “Not possible, Gwaine. These rocks are sedimentary, not metamorphic.”

Arthur tossed an appreciative head bob in Gwen’s direction as he shoved Morgana toward the small cavern, hoping to escape before the others saw through her clever ruse. She swatted his hand away from her shoulder, but continued walking briskly anyway. As soon as they slid into the cavern, she turned and hissed at Arthur. “What the hell is Merlin doing back there? The existence of magic has been a secret for hundreds of years, and now suddenly, everyone knows about it, and there’s apparently laws and everything?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur tugged open his rucksack and started pulling out the rosemary branches they had collected from Gaius’s garden. “All I know is I need to get back there to help him.”

After they heard Gwaine and Gwen move on from the large cavern, Arthur built a small fire with the branches, and Morgana held the glass potion bottle over the flame until the liquid inside changed from yellow to green to dark blue. As soon as the potion was ready, Arthur doused the fire, hoping the smell of burning rosemary and smoke would not attract Gwen or Gwaine’s attention.

“Okay, now I just have to pour this in a circle and step in while you’re saying the spell for me?”

“Incanting the spell, but yes,” Morgana said. “Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own? What if you can’t save Merlin, or what if he’s already…” Arthur’s heart sank at her unfinished sentence. “You won’t be able to do the spell yourself. You need someone with magic.”

Arthur checked that he still had the second bottle of potion, as well as some extra rosemary branches in his rucksack. “I know, but if something happens, and I can’t make it back, I don’t want to trap you in the 14th century, too.” He closed up his pack and pulled it on and then reached for the bottle in Morgana’s hand.

Before she released it, she grabbed onto his wrist and wrapped her hand around his. “Just… be careful.”

She paused, and Arthur looked up to see her pursing her lips and working her jaw as if she were trying to hold back tears. Her sisterly concern was awkwardly unfamiliar, but also welcome. And comforting. He pulled her into a hug again, and she gave him a brief squeeze, but then pushed him away with a smirk.

“Look, I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about me. I’m living in a strange new world where I’m suddenly illegal. Who knows what else you might change, tromping around in the Middle Ages? Try not to step on any butterflies, okay?”

“Okay, I’ll try.” Arthur agreed with a knowing grin. Her annoyed request put them back on familiar ground, but he knew she really did care about him. He decided that if he did make it back, he’d make a point to spend more time with her. Not too much, but more than one meal a year.

“Ready?” he asked, as he unscrewed the lid from the bottle, ready to pour it onto the ground before him.

Morgana nodded, and as he started pouring, she started incanting the words she had memorised on the drive back that morning. As soon as the potion touched the cave floor, Arthur knew the spell was working. The liquid left a glowing trail on the rock, and a strange wind swirled through the cavern, blowing Morgana’s dark hair around her head and giving her a definite witchlike air as she stood, arms raised, chanting unfamiliar words.

Arthur completed the circle on the ground, and then three things happened in rapid succession. The circle of potion rose from the cave floor and the glowing ring started expanding. Gwen stepped into the cavern asking, “Are you burning something?” And Morgana whipped around at the sound of Gwen’s voice and lost her balance; she toppled into the circle and immediately disappeared.

“Morgana!” Arthur shouted at the same moment as Gwen shouted, “You  _ are  _ doing magic!”

The ring started closing, so, panicked that he wouldn’t make it, Arthur lunged forward, but Gwen reached for him, grabbing the back of his shirt to hold him back.

“Arthur, you can’t!”

“Let me go!” Wrenching his shoulder out of Gwen’s grip, Arthur stepped into the circle. He felt like a cartoon character who had stepped off the edge of a cliff, but didn’t know it yet. He was hovering mid-air. Colourful lights flashed around him, and his feet kicked automatically beneath him, but they found no purchase. Then, without warning, he pitched forward and landed on his hands and knees in exactly the same spot in the cave that he had just left.

Except he wasn’t in the same spot at all. The rock pile on the far side of the cave was gone, a large, empty passage in its place. And several of the stalactites that had been lying broken on the floor still clung tight to the ceiling.

“You made it,” Morgana said flatly from behind him.

He whipped around to find her scowling at him, arms crossed. “I’m so sorry, Morgana. I never meant for you to be dragged along with me.” She still scowled. “Don’t worry, though. Maybe with your help, I’ll be able to find Merlin even faster, and we can all go back home.”

“You’re forgetting a couple of things, aren’t you?” She took a step forward and lowered her voice. “If anyone here finds out I have magic, I’ll be burned right alongside Merlin. And even if we find him and bring him back, magic is known and illegal now. He won’t be much safer in our time than he is here. Not to mention, Gwen just saw me casting a pretty major spell. She’s probably calling the police on me as we speak.”

“Gwen wouldn’t do that. Not without giving you a chance to explain first.”

“Are you sure? Because she seemed pretty—”

Just then, there was a flash of light in the middle of the cave, and Gwen appeared, tumbling onto the floor.

Arthur exchanged a nervous glance with Morgana before rushing forward to help Gwen. “Are you okay?” He held out his hand for support and allowed her to pull herself to her feet.

“What was that?” Gwen glared at Morgana, probably because she was the one who had been incanting the spell. “Don’t give me some crap about oil reservoirs, because I know that was actual magic. What sort of spell was it? What are you two doing in here?”

With a sigh of resignation, Morgana responded, “It was a time-travel spell. We’ve travelled back in time.”

Gwen rolled her eyes and brushed the dirt from the knees of her trousers. “Whatever. You don’t have to tell me. Like Gwaine said, I’m not going to turn you in. Just know that what you’re doing is dangerous, and I don’t want any part of it.”

She started toward the crevice she entered through, but paused and pointed toward the now open tunnel on the opposite wall. “When did you clear those rocks? How far does that go?”

Arthur couldn’t help smiling. Gwen was a scientist through and through; her curiosity was obviously more powerful than her anger as she walked toward the tunnel, pulling a torch from her pocket and switching it on to shine into the dark passage. “Is this what your spell was for? To clear this tunnel?”

“Gwen, we didn’t clear the tunnel,” Arthur said gently. “Morgana wasn’t lying. We’ve travelled back in time. Do you remember all the stalactites that were on the ground? Look,” he pointed to the ceiling above her head. “They’re still attached. They haven’t fallen or been knocked down yet.”

Shaking her head, Gwen stared first at the stalactites and then around the rest of the cavern. “That’s not possible.”

“Well, hopefully it is. And hopefully we’ve arrived at the correct time.” Arthur motioned for Morgana to follow him into the tunnel. “This is the exit that Merlin used, so we’ll follow this out and try to find his village from there.” He paused to tug softly on Gwen’s wrist. “Come with us. We’re kind of in a hurry. I can explain as we go.”

Gwen raised her eyebrows, clearly skeptical, but she followed him.

******

“But how will you know how to find Merlin? And what will you do when you do find him?” Gwen asked, after Arthur had filled her in on the events of the last few days. “And won’t we stand out in our modern clothes?”

Arthur laughed and motioned back and forth between Gwen and Morgana. “You two should really start hanging out. You’re two peas in a pod.”

Morgana grinned, pulling a large branch out of the way, but as Gwen passed under it, she just eyed her suspiciously, clearly still wary of Morgana’s powerful display of magic. They had left the cave on the opposite side from where they were used to going in, hoping to find a pathway to Merlin’s village, but instead they found themselves in the middle of a dense forest. No wonder the cave had made such a good hiding place for Merlin all those months. They constantly had to step over fallen logs and push branches and vines out of the way.

“Oh!” Morgana cried out and stopped walking.

“What is it? Do you see the village?” Arthur peered all around.

“No, but I just remembered a glamour spell a friend taught me once when I’d had a bad haircut, and I needed to look professional for a meeting.”

Arthur glared at her. Was she worried about her hair being messy? They were in the woods. Why did she care what her hair looked like? But then Morgana raised one hand above her head, spoke the words of a spell, and dropped her hand below her waist. The air seemed to shimmer before her, and then suddenly, instead of jeans and a jumper, she was wearing the type of dress peasants wore in films set in the Middle Ages.

“Whoa,” Gwen breathed, looking impressed. She ventured a hesitant smile. “All right. That’s pretty cool.” Her smile widened. “Can you do me?”

Grinning, Morgana stepped in front of Gwen and repeated the spell and the gesture. When she finished, Gwen looked down to admire the long, lavender dress she now wore. Arthur smiled to himself. Morgana was obviously trying to impress Gwen with her magic. She had added a pattern of embroidered flowers and leaves down the front of the dress.

Running her hand across the fabric, Gwen giggled. “That’s so weird. I look down and see this gorgeous gown, but I still feel like I’m wearing my t-shirt and trousers. Can I still reach what’s in my pockets?”

“Of course you can. It’s only a glamour,” Morgana explained. “It just changes what we see. So, you’ll have to remember to act like you’re wearing a long, flowing dress. Don’t climb up any ladders or anything.”

“What about me?” Arthur asked, motioning toward his own polo and jeans.

An evil grin was the only warning he got before his sister flung her hand in his direction, dressing him in tights and a puffy, colorful shirt adorned with jingle bells.

“You’re a jester!” Gwen snickered with delight.

“Very funny, Morgana.”

“Fine.” She waved her hand again and the jingle bells were gone, replaced with a simple red tunic over brown trousers.

Arthur nodded his approval, and they continued through the forest. He had just about decided they should turn around and try going a different direction out of the cave, when they heard a voice call out, “Merlin, wait!”

Gwen and Morgana immediately spun around to look at Arthur, their eyes wide. His breath caught in his throat, and unable to speak, he simply took off running toward the voice. As he ran, he had to watch carefully where he put his feet, so he couldn’t look too far ahead.

“They know about the cave, Merlin. You can’t hide there anymore.” The same voice shouted again, this time much closer.

Arthur turned slightly to the right to readjust his trajectory toward the voice. He darted between two small trees, and then had to swerve around the thick trunk of an oak tree. The moment he rounded the tree, however, he slammed into someone running from the opposite direction. Arthur cried out as he rebounded into the trunk of the tree, but the other man fell to the ground with a pained grunt.

“Sorry! I’m so sorry!” Arthur looked down, and his heart flipped in his chest. He nearly cried out again, but this time, with joy. “Merlin? Is that you?” He reached out a hand to help him up, but Merlin frowned and pushed himself up from the forest floor.

“I can’t believe I found you.” Arthur stared in awe at Merlin’s face. Dark curls clung to his forehead which was drenched with sweat, and his blue eyes were bright as they scanned Arthur’s face in confusion. He tilted his head, shifting the sunlight and shadows dancing across his face. Oh no. In the darkness of the cave, Arthur hadn’t noticed Merlin’s distinct cheekbones. He couldn’t stop himself from blurting out, “And you’re even more gorgeous in person.”

Merlin’s eyes widened in sudden recognition. “Arthur?” His forehead creased. “How are you here?”

“I came to find you. To help you.”

“But—” Before Merlin could finish, another man jogged up from behind him. Arthur realised he must be the owner of the voice he had been following. The one who was trying to warn Merlin.

Arthur had a sudden thought, and he pointed toward the man. “Wait, are you Will?” When he gave a confused nod, Arthur grinned. “You’re the one who left the message for me. In the cave?” He jerked one thumb behind him. “About Merlin being caught? That’s why I’m here.” He looked back at Merlin with a soft smile. “I couldn’t let them kill you.”

“Yes, but… you said 700 years.” Merlin shook his head, mouth slightly ajar. “How?”

Arthur heard Morgana and Gwen walking up behind him, so he turned and gestured toward them. “Well, it turns out my sister has secretly been a sorcerer all our lives, so we hunted down a time-travel potion, and brought it back to our spot in the cave, and… abracadabra… here we are!”

A snort from Morgana told him she didn’t appreciate his oversimplification of her wielding such powerful magic, but at the moment, he couldn’t care less what his sister thought. He was standing two feet from Merlin. Finally.

“A potion?” Merlin wasn’t quite as awed as Arthur at finally meeting face to face, it seemed. “For time-travel? What kind of potion? What’s in it?”

The urgency of Merlin’s questioning threw Arthur for a moment. “All I remember was armadillo bile. What does it matter?”

“Armadillo bile!” Merlin exclaimed, inexplicably excited. “What else?”

Arthur looked to Morgana for help, and she reminded him, “Didn’t you take a picture of Gaius’s book?”

“Right!”

Arthur pulled out his mobile and opened the picture he had taken of the page in Gaius’s book with the photograph of the ancient scroll. He held it out, but even though Arthur had explained all about smartphones to Merlin, he seemed hesitant to touch it. Instead, he stepped closer and stood shoulder to shoulder with Arthur to look down at the screen.

As soon as he could see the image, Merlin gasped and looked up at Arthur. “Where did you find this?”

“This old sorcerer Morgana knew had a book with this picture in it. Apparently some Druids had kept it for centuries, and then it was discovered again and put in a museum of magic. Lots of people had tried to use it before, but it didn’t work for them. It only worked for us because there was already a window in time in our cave.”

Arthur smiled as he used the term Merlin had used when they first met, and Merlin returned his smile, nodding gently in recognition. Then he turned to his friend Will who was also nodding. “You were right,” Will said. “That was the missing ingredient. Location.”

Before Arthur could ask what they were talking about, Merlin reached behind him and pulled out a rolled-up paper that was tucked into the back of his trousers. He held it out for Arthur and the others to see and then began unrolling it. Arthur recognised it almost immediately.

“The scroll!” His eyes widened as they met Merlin’s. “The same one?” Merlin nodded. “Did you get it from the Druids?”

Merlin shook his head slowly. “No, I wrote it. Yesterday.”

“You wrote it?” Arthur asked, dumbfounded. “But how? You said the only magical training you had was that short time with the Druids. Apparently, sorcerers have been trying to master time travel for centuries, and no one has even come close.” He looked to Morgana for confirmation.

She nodded. “I don’t know much about potions— I haven’t had much training, either— but when I spoke the words of that spell in the cave, I felt their power.” She stared at Merlin, placing both hands over her heart. “Deeply. It was like I was connected to…” Pursing her lips, she shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. Nature? Other sorcerers? Magic itself?” She huffed a laugh. “It’s hard to explain.”

With a knowing smile, Merlin told her, “That connection, though. That’s exactly what I wanted when I created the spell.” He turned back to Arthur. “The Druids left me with a couple of books about magic, and since they were my only link to magic outside of myself, I studied them intensely for years. And I started to notice connections between the spells described on those pages. Each time we cast a spell, we draw from a part of ourselves. Healing spells pull their energy from our empathy. Utilitarian spells draw from our desire to be useful, to have a purpose. Spells meant to attack essentially come from our need to protect— people, property, or even beliefs. Sometimes those beliefs are misguided, but the spell energy for offensive and defensive spells is the same.”

Morgana continued to stare at Merlin as he spoke, and Arthur couldn’t tell from her expression whether she agreed with Merlin or not. It all sounded perfectly reasonable to him, but as a non-magic user, he had obviously never felt the power Merlin spoke of.

“Potions work a little differently,” Merlin continued. “Some, once created, can be used to serve their purpose without further magic, but others require magic both to brew and to use. And those potions are powerful, because they combine both the physical and the emotional aspects of magic.”

Everyone listened intently as Merlin spoke. Will was nodding along, as if he had heard Merlin give this explanation before, but was still impressed by his friend. Gwen frowned and fidgeted with her fingers, occasionally looking down and then back at Merlin, making Arthur wonder whether she was reconsidering her previous fear and hatred of magic. Morgana continued to stare, her expression unreadable. Arthur, on the other hand, felt certain his adoration of Merlin was written all over his face as he listened to his analysis.

“When I was captured, I knew I wouldn’t get a fair trial. My only chance was to leave. They put these on me to stop me using magic,” Merlin pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to reveal a metal shackle on his wrist, and Arthur’s throat clenched. It looked painful. “But I knew I could depend on Will to break me out.” He and Will exchanged grins. “I just had to decide where I would go after I got out.”

“I told him he should try to find the Druids,” Will said, “since they helped him before.” He looked at Merlin with a vaguely annoyed smile. “But he had this crazy idea that, if he could get back to the cave, somehow, even without his magic, he’d be able to make that potion and get back to you.” He turned his annoyed look to Arthur, but his expression quickly softened. “And here you are.”

Arthur thought he detected a hint of respect from Will as he continued to look at him. Perhaps he could sense how much Arthur had come to care for his old friend. Arthur hoped so.

“I guess our first step is to get those shackles off you, so you can use your magic again.” Arthur reached down and gently lifted Merlin’s wrist.

“They cannot be removed until their magic is neutralised.” Merlin gave a slight shrug, his shoulder brushing against Arthur’s.

Arthur ran his thumb over the base of Merlin’s hand, just above the top of the iron shackle. It felt so good to be able to touch Merlin and feel the heat of him pressed against his side, but he didn’t have time to dwell on that feeling. They had to get Merlin’s magic back if they had any hope of truly freeing him.

“I assume it would take magic to neutralise them? Is that something Morgana could do?”

Morgana shook her head. “I have no idea how to do that. I’m sorry, Merlin. I only know a few simple spells.”

Merlin looked back at her, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. “But you used my time-travel spell to get here. Your magic must be powerful.” He held up his wrists and quirked his eyebrows with a hopeful smile. “I could talk you through it.”

“Okay, then,” she answered with a hesitant chuckle. “Let’s give it a shot.”

As Merlin and Morgana started working on removing the magic from the shackles, Will approached Arthur. “You plan to take him back with you, don’t you?”

Arthur nodded. “It’s the best way to keep him safe, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Will said, “but it’s about more than just keeping him safe.” He looked down and kicked at a pile of rotting leaves with the toe of his boot. “You… care for him.” His eyes rose to meet Arthur’s for half a second and then lowered back to focus on the leaves. “You want to be with him?”

Will was obviously uncomfortable with the thought of two men caring for one another the way he cared for his wife, but Arthur had to give him credit. He was definitely making an effort for his friend’s sake.

“Only if he feels the same,” Arthur said firmly. “I’m happy to just be his friend and help him build a safe and happy life in the 21st century.”

Looking up with a hesitant smile, Will nodded his appreciation of Arthur’s declaration. “Good to know.” He looked over at Merlin and then back to Arthur. “Though, honestly, every time he and I have spoken over the last few weeks, all I’ve heard is ‘Arthur this’ and ‘Arthur that.’ So it’s probably safe to say he feels the same about you.”

Arthur couldn’t contain his grin at hearing this. He would love to believe that he and Merlin could build a life together, but he would remain cautiously optimistic until he talked things over with Merlin himself.

“When his hiding place was discovered, and he was going to be killed, he insisted that I go carve a message for you on the cave wall. He wanted you to know why he had disappeared. But, of course, you entered the cave from the opposite side, so I had to hike all the way around the hill to make sure you saw the message. I carved that first message really deep. ‘Arthur, go that way!’” Will drew an arrow in the air before him, and Arthur’s eyes grew wide.

“It did say Arthur! I knew it!”

Will looked confused, but before Arthur had a chance to explain, Morgana cried out gleefully, “I did it!”

“Nicely done,” Merlin said, and then he looked down at the offensive devices still clamped around his wrists. His eyes flashed gold, and the locks released with a click and the shackles fell to the ground. He rubbed his sore wrists, and Arthur tried not drool, wondering why he had found that small display of magic so damn sexy.

“Morgana mentioned you had enough of the time-travel potion for a return trip.” Merlin walked back over to rejoin Arthur and Will. “We should probably get to the cave before the guards find us.”

“That’s a good idea,” Arthur said. “Do you have everything you need to come back with us?”

Merlin laughed. “I don’t even know what I would need to live in the year 2019. I’m afraid you’re going to have to help me quite a bit, Arthur.”

“Of course I’ll help you. You can stay with me as long as you need.” Arthur tried not to sound too eager at the prospect. Morgana’s quiet snort told him he was not successful in hiding his enthusiasm.

“Thank you. I would appreciate being able to stay with you.”

Arthur felt a thrill when Merlin sounded just as eager as he did.

“We should get going. Those guards won’t be too far behind us.” Will sounded less keen about Merlin leaving to go live with Arthur as he turned back and started stalking in the direction of the cave.

Arthur allowed Merlin to walk ahead of him with Will, and he fell in behind them, motioning for Morgana and Gwen to follow. They had only walked a few steps when Gwen spoke up.

“Um, Arthur? I think you’re forgetting something.”

Everyone stopped walking and turned to face her.

“What’s that?” Arthur asked.

“The scroll with the instructions for the potion? Didn’t you say the Druids kept it safe all these years?” She continued without waiting for an answer. “So, how can they do that unless Merlin gives them the scroll?”

Arthur turned to Merlin, heart sinking. They had been so close to going home. “Do you know how to get the scroll to the Druids?”

“I can do it.”

Will held out his hand, but Merlin shook his head. “With the elders on the warpath over my use of magic, they would be suspicious if you suddenly made contact with Druids. I won’t let you put your family in danger, Will.”

“Then what’s your plan?” Will sounded slightly irritated, and Arthur couldn’t blame him. Of course, Will still wanted to do whatever he could to help his friend, and he must feel like Merlin didn’t trust him.

Biting his lip, Merlin said, “I would do it myself, but I’m not sure how long it would take to meet them. I don’t even know how to contact them. They’re nomads. They have to keep moving for fear of persecution. Although, I have felt strangely connected to them, even after all these years. I might be able to—”

Merlin paused and then closed his eyes, growing very still. Arthur looked at Will, raising his eyebrows in silent question. What was Merlin doing? Will shrugged, shaking his head. Arthur didn’t want to disturb Merlin if he was thinking about a solution, but his odd stillness was unnerving.

He was just about to ask Merlin if he was okay, when Merlin’s eyes flew open, and he drew a sharp breath. “No, it’s not working. I need a physical connection as well.” He started striding away from the cave. “Come on. We have to go back. I need the book Iseldir gave me.”

“Merlin, wait!” Arthur called out as he followed Merlin, matching his brisk pace. “What are you talking about?”

“You can’t go back there.” Will caught up with them. “They’ll kill you on sight.”

Merlin did not slow down. “I have my magic now. I won’t be in any danger.”

“But why do you need this book?” Arthur asked.

“I need something that Iseldir, the leader of the Druids, touched. If I’m holding that, I think I’ll be able to contact him.” He pointed toward his head. “In my mind.”

“You can do that?” Arthur was amazed. “When you don’t even know where he is?”

Morgana walked up beside them. “It is possible. I have twice experienced shared dreams with a friend. Both times were when one of us was going through a stressful time. And both times, we were living in different cities.”

Arthur was blown away by this new knowledge. Psychic communication across a great distance? He was starting to wonder whether there were any limits to the power of magic. When Merlin came back with them, would he be able to continue to hide his magic? Could Arthur even ask him to?

“Does anyone else smell smoke?” Gwen asked.

Arthur had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t noticed, but now that she mentioned it, there was a definite smoky aroma filling the air. “Are we getting close to your village, Merlin? Could it be someone cooking in their fireplace?”

“It’s too strong,” Will said, picking up his pace.

They all started jogging slightly, following Will. The village must be close, because the underbrush in the forest had been somewhat cleared, or at least crushed by many people walking through the area. At last, even the trees started to thin out, and they could see a thick column of black smoke ahead.

Arthur paused to take in the scene, but Will and Merlin took off running toward the village. Gwen tore after them, her speed and agility causing the illusion of her dress to disintegrate. Morgana and Arthur exchanged a frightened glance and then followed. From up ahead, Merlin shouted, “It’s the school!” and Arthur’s chest tightened.

Once they cleared the trees, Arthur could finally see the village itself. They passed the buildings on the outskirts: some barns, some houses, an open shed that appeared to be a blacksmith’s workshop. The smoke was rising from a building closer to the center of town. Merlin and Will sprinted down the road, and Arthur followed. As they got closer, a haze of smoke filled the air, and Arthur’s lungs started to burn. Then he saw the blaze.

The sight was terrifying. One side of the building was engulfed in flames, and smoke poured from the roof and windows. A crowd had formed, and several villagers made a line to pass buckets of water to douse the fire, but their efforts were not having much effect.

Merlin had said this building was the school, so Arthur looked around frantically for children who had been rescued from the fire. He saw none.

In the commotion, Arthur had lost sight of Merlin. He had a moment of panic, scouring the crowd, but then he heard a great shout. He looked toward the sound, and he saw Merlin, standing before the school, his arms outstretched, calling out words Arthur did not recognise in a formidable voice that sent chills down Arthur’s spine. A stream of water shot from the sky onto the roof of the school, dousing the flames. Merlin moved his arms and the water seemed to follow his movements, pouring over one section of fire and then another.

The villagers stood frozen, watching Merlin wield his magic to save the school children. But the blaze must have initiated deep within the building, because as Merlin moved his stream of water, the flames sometimes revived along its previous path.

“It’s not enough.”

Morgana gave voice to Arthur’s fear that Merlin’s magical solution was just as useless as the villagers with buckets, but then she pushed past Arthur and moved to stand beside Merlin. She stretched out her arms and started chanting the same words he spoke. A second stream of water joined Merlin’s, and, together, they began to make progress toward extinguishing the fire.

A hopeful chatter began to rise in the crowd, and Will and another man were selected to enter the building to retrieve the children who were trapped inside. Before anyone made it out, though, a terrible crunch rang out, and part of the roof started to collapse.

Suddenly, another man stepped from the crowd to stand beside Merlin. He lifted his arms, and the collapsing roof slowed its progress. Then two women joined in, and the falling beams stopped completely. Merlin and Morgana were still controlling the water that poured into the building, putting out the flames.

Through the smoke and steam, a child emerged. And then another. Women ran forward to grab their sons and hug them. Soon, a line of children came stumbling out of the school along with Will, who was carrying a young boy. The other man who had rushed in followed, supporting a man Arthur guessed was the schoolteacher.

“Is that everyone?” A voice called out, and the teacher nodded, falling to the ground, weeping in relief.

A cheer arose, and the three who had stepped forward to prevent the building collapsing dropped their arms, allowing the roof to fall, taking portions of the walls with it. Merlin and Morgana continued creating streams of water for several minutes until they were satisfied that the fire was out and would not spread to surrounding structures.

The children, who ranged in age from around six to thirteen were coated in soot and many were coughing from smoke inhalation. Some also cried, while others seemed too stunned to respond to their mothers who clung to them desperately.

Gwen sprung into action. She started checking the children for burns and other injuries they may have sustained during their ordeal. Amazingly, she had a small first aid kit stashed in one of the pockets of her cargo trousers. Although, perhaps Arthur should not be surprised. After all, she had dressed that morning for a wild caving adventure, and Gwen was definitely one to plan ahead and be prepared for any circumstance.

Merlin and Morgana were still finishing up with the fire, so Arthur jumped in to help Gwen.

“I only have one packet of Aloe Vera and a small roll of bandages. Now, those won’t help with severe burns, so help me decide which burns might benefit most from first aid,” Gwen instructed Arthur as she cleaned a cut on one child’s arm and applied antiseptic ointment.

Several women had already fetched buckets of cool water and were applying wet cloths to some of the burns. Thankfully, no one had severe burns, and after being outside in the fresh air for several minutes, all the children had stopped coughing.

Once the children’s wounds had been tended to, Arthur looked around for Merlin. He found him sitting on a small bench near the well. An older, dark-haired woman sat beside him with her arm wrapped around his shoulders. Arthur guessed she must be his mother.

“Hey, Merlin. Are you okay?” Arthur asked gently. He hated to disturb them, but he did want to talk to Merlin.

Merlin and his mother both looked up and smiled. “I’m fine.” He stood, reaching back a hand to help his mother to her feet. “Arthur, I’d like you to meet my mother, Hunith.”

Arthur wasn’t sure whether shaking hands was customary during the 1300s, so he simply smiled and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you. Your son has been a good friend to me.”

She seemed pleased with the compliment, and they stood chatting for a few minutes. Hunith had not been able to visit Merlin while he lived in the cave, but they’d had one short talk after he had been captured the day before, and Merlin had told her about his friend from the future.

“Merlin tells me he plans to go back with you to your time.” She reached for Merlin’s hand as she spoke, and Arthur’s heart clenched. She knew she would never see Merlin again. When Arthur had imagined bringing Merlin to 2019 before, he had pictured saving him from certain death. He hadn’t thought about pulling him away from friends and family who loved him.

“Hey, sorry to interrupt.” Will walked over to them. He was holding the hand of the boy he had pulled from the fire. That boy must be Will’s son—the one Merlin had healed in front of the village elders. “They’re asking for you, Merlin. His lordship has come down from the manor, and he wants to talk to you.”

Hunith gripped Merlin’s forearm. “Run. Go with Arthur now.”

“No, I think you should come talk to him, Merlin,” Will said with a mysterious smile. “He’s very grateful you saved all the children.”

“He is?” Merlin sounded skeptical.

“He is,” Will affirmed, and then he rolled his eyes and huffed a laugh. “I’m not sure he actually cares about our kids, but in a few years, he’ll need these boys to farm his land, won’t he?” He ruffled his son’s hair affectionately and then turned, motioning for Merlin to follow him. “Come on. I wouldn’t tell you to come if I thought you’d be in danger.”

So Merlin allowed Will to lead them to Lord Berolt, who was in charge of the village and its surrounding land. Merlin looked him straight in the eye and greeted him with respect, though Arthur could hear the trepidation in his voice.

“Merlin, I understand we have you to thank for the lives of these young men and their teacher.”

“I couldn’t let them die, your lordship. Not when I knew I had the ability to save them.”

“Of course you couldn’t.” Lord Berolt looked toward the crowd that stood listening to his every word. “And I understand several others assisted you in your magical rescue. Come forward, please.” When no one moved, he smiled. “You’re not in trouble. This incident has me reconsidering some of our laws governing the use of magic.”

Lord Berolt explained that he and Lady Berolt had been uncomfortable when they learned that Merlin was to be put to death simply for healing a child, but they believed in following the law, so they hadn’t spoken out. Then today, he had been notified about the fire, and he hurried to the village expecting to find a tragedy, only to discover the fire had been extinguished and all the children in the school had been saved by five sorcerers. He felt he could no longer support the king’s laws regarding magic.

“I believe I must begin a conversation with His Majesty about the benefits of magic. In the meantime, in this village, magic will no longer be outlawed. It will be treated the same as any other tool or weapon. If magic is used to harm others, the sorcerer will be punished, but the mere act of wielding magic will no longer bring a death sentence.” Lord Berolt gave a pointed look toward the village elders who nodded their acceptance of his new rules, though several of them did not look happy about it.

Lord Berolt stayed for several hours and talked with each of the sorcerers as well as the elders. Several of the villagers thanked Merlin, though many went out of their way to avoid him and the others who had displayed their magic.

Evening fell, and Lord Berolt returned to his manor, and the villagers who were still hanging around headed home. Will’s wife, son, and infant daughter had returned to their home hours before, but Will had remained, eager to defend Merlin and his magic to anyone who would listen. Finally, though, as the sun fell below the treeline, Will pulled Merlin aside for a quiet conversation. After a few minutes, they shared a hug, and then Will left. Hunith took her turn speaking with her son, hugging him repeatedly and clasping his hands, and then she, too, headed home.

Gwen had been given some bread and cheese as a thank you for treating the children’s wounds, and she and Morgana had found a quiet spot on the edge of the forest to share a picnic supper. After Merlin had said his good-byes, he walked over to Arthur, who had been waiting for him on the bench by the well.

“I’ve made contact with Iseldir, and he’s sending someone to meet Will to get the scroll. The Druids will keep it safe, so you’ll be able to make the potion and come find me.” Merlin laughed at his use of future tense for events that had already occurred. “We can go now. I’m ready.”

Arthur smiled sadly and motioned for Merlin to sit beside him. “Are you sure you still want to come? Magic is legal now. Everyone knows your secret, and you won’t have to hide who you are anymore.”

Merlin looked into Arthur’s eyes and sighed. He slid one hand into Arthur’s between them on the bench. “I think you know my magic wasn’t the only part of me I’ve had to hide.”

He stroked his thumb up and down Arthur’s hand, his eyes twinkling as they remained locked with Arthur’s, and Arthur thought his heart might stop. He squeezed Merlin’s hand. “There were other sorcerers here you didn’t know about before. There’s probably other gay men, too.”

“Maybe.” Merlin’s cheeks dimpled as he leaned closer to Arthur and lowered his voice. “But I’m the only one who has fallen for a brilliant, blond-haired scientist from the future.”

Arthur’s heart burst in his chest, and he beamed at Merlin. “Is that so?”

Merlin gave a single nod. “I want to come with you, Arthur. I want to learn about cars and computers and seismic surveys. And I want to see where you live. I just…” He closed the distance between them, pressing his forehead against Arthur’s. “I want to be with you.”

Arthur closed his eyes and tilted forward, pressing his lips gently against Merlin’s. He felt a thrill rush through him as Merlin sighed into the kiss. The sky was darkening, and they still had quite a trek through the forest, so they separated reluctantly and then walked hand in hand to find the girls and return to the cave.

******

Bright, colourful lights flashed, and Arthur’s legs flailed beneath him until he fell, rolling forward onto the cave floor. He leapt to his feet and held his breath, anxiously waiting for Merlin to follow. Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long. A green circle flared on the ground, and Merlin appeared, tumbling onto his back. Arthur reached down to pull him into a relieved hug, and then they stepped out of the way to wait for Gwen and Morgana’s arrival.

After two more flashes, all four of them stood in the cavern, grinning at each other. “We made it! We’re back!” Gwen laughed, pointing at the broken stalactites on the floor.

“Has any time passed since we left?” Morgana asked.

Merlin shook his head. “The spell should draw from the mental image the caster is creating. That’s why I had you cast it again. You could picture the exact time you left.”

“So, did it work?” Arthur automatically twisted his wrist to check the time, but he had removed his Fitbit before they left.

Just then, Gwaine slid through the crevice into the chamber. “I saw all the lights! Was someone doing magic in here?” He sounded oddly excited for someone who had earlier told a story about the dangers of magic. “Who was it? Gwen, have you been holding out on me? Don’t tell me we could have been exploring this cave without carrying lights and ropes and everything!”

Arthur and the others exchanged confused glances, and then Gwen spoke up. “I thought you hated magic?”

“What?” Gwaine scoffed. “Why would you think that? Wasn’t I just saying I wished we had a sorcerer to light up those tiny passages for us to explore?”

Realisation dawned on Arthur, and he reached for Merlin’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I guess Lord Berolt’s conversations with the king went well.”

Merlin laughed. “I guess so.”

“Hey, who’s the new guy?” Gwaine asked.

Arthur looked at Merlin, a smile spreading slowly across his face as a brilliant idea occurred to him. He slung his arm around Merlin’s shoulder and said, “This is my boyfriend, Merlin. He’s going to teach magic at the university.”


End file.
